After canning two albums, Miami-based DJ/ producer Danny Daze delivers a 92-minute concept LP, truncated for VR headsets. Danny Turner finds out more…
Heavily influenced by the Miami bass genre, Danny Daze is famed for his eclectic DJ sets and a love for releasing hard, driving techno, electro and disco with an experimental IDM lean. Founding the Omnidisc label in 2015, he has continued to redefine his role at the cornerstone of Miami’s diverse dance scene, yet despite a couple of aborted attempts Daze also harboured the ambition to step out of the box and create a concept album that moves well beyond what he’s best known for.
The pandemic finally allowed Daze the time to focus, resulting in a furious period of creativity during which he created 100 tracks, swerving from abstract IDM to booming bass music, absorbing influences past and present. Daze then honed the tracks down to a 90-minute continuous concept piece titled BLUE, designed to be listened to as a singularly immersive album. Fully invested in his newly creative approach, Daze has also created an abridged 33-minute audio-visual version in full Dolby Atmos for virtual reality headsets.
Last time we spoke in 2015 you said you were going to release a solo album sometime around February 2016. Obviously, you had a change of heart at some point?
“I actually had an album completely done in 2013, canned that and pretty much had another one finished for release in 2016 but it wasn’t 100 per cent exactly how I wanted it to be either. In the end, I decided to disperse the tracks to EPs. I really wanted my first debut album to be able to tell a story in parallel with what I consider an album to be, which meant having a concept rather than just presenting 10 dance tracks.”
It’s said that your debut album BLUE has been 24 years in the making. Would you agree that this is a culmination of everything you’ve absorbed since you became a producer/DJ?
“We joke around and say that it’s been 24 years in the making, but there’s actually quite a bit of truth behind that. The album took around three years, but the original tracks were truncated down from 100, which really was a culmination of 24 years of my experiences as a DJ and producer, LPs I’ve listened to that meant a lot to me and just trying to figure out how to grab a listener in a way that’s not related to dance music. BLUE has IDM elements, but also has an old-school DJ Techmaster P.E.B. kind of sound – he’s the guy who used to do Miami bass, super subwoofer-driven car audio stuff.”
Three years in the making takes us back to the pandemic. Did that period give you the time to finally focus on a more expansive body of work?
“It automatically gave me the time and peace to think and subsequentl
