Today we’d like to introduce you to Alaaniel Davis.
Hi Alaaniel, we’d love for you to start by introducing yourself.
People who get to know me here in Atlanta are often surprised to learn that not only do I come from a religious family but that when I was three years old, we moved to Australia on a mission trip which lasted for three years. Although there are only select memories that I still have from this time, this was when I was enrolled into my first piano lessons. I was always homeschooled until I graduated from high school, so my parents had paired me with a friend of theirs who played professionally. After some time, my classes had to be discontinued, but my time in Australia also holds my first memories of being on a computer. My dad is a tech-head, always interested in new commercial technology, so we had a household computer which I remember using to call home to my grandparents in the USA, play with 3D Pinball Space Cadet, and toy with Paintshop Pro.
The last year I lived in Australia as a child, my only brother was born, another thing that surprises people that I have. He and I have always been direct opposites with a touch of similarity both growing up and today. Whereas I was a homebody, you almost couldn’t get him inside; I was busy reading and composing while he was learning to make crucibles for his aluminum anthill casts. Today, I’m electronic and he’s acoustic, but we’re both bass musicians.
We moved back to the USA when I was six to Georgia where most of my family lives, and I’ve been based here ever since, save the opportunities I’ve had to travel for short periods. My dad, having led congregations this whole time, had picked up guitar and a small assortment of musical skills, and my mother had been in a cover band and clogging troupe before they met. Thanks to this with other artistic family members, my family had always supported me pursuing art or music as a life and career path and had seen enough success from others to not be worried.
I definitely took up my dad’s interest in computers which translated into an interest in flash games. I didn’t know it at the time, but flash games shaped my introduction to EDM through the soundtracks playing in the background, not unnoticed while I explored a new world or worked towards a high score. Every now and then, a track with a particularly interesting melody or sound would break through my attention and get added to a playlist to be burned onto a CD to listen to later from my boombox. Writing that feels weird. I may hadn’t realized that was art theft as a child, but I finally knew what Techno was. Eventually, religious superstition led to the parental confiscation of my CDs, which marked a large gap in my attention on EDM.
In high school (still at home) I got to take piano lessons for a while again, thanks to another family friend. The whole time in between, however, I had never stopped playing, only I adapted to playing by ear. When I was faced again with lessons, I was struggling to read and play children’s songs but would ironically play my rhythmically adapted Hallelujah by Leonard Cohen at my recital with no sheet music in front of me. It may not have represented what I learned in class, but it certainly displayed the hard work that I had put in before receiving the lessons.
In 2008, I became interested in Dubstep for the first time when many others did as well when Skrillex hit headlines. Funny enough, before Skrillex, I had accidentally discovered Drum and Bass through Pendulum with their album In Silico, only, at the time, I assumed they just performed on a lot of drums! Very steaky of you, EDM. The introduction of Dubstep and revisiting of Drum and Bass was the final hook I needed to shift my attention from the Metal and Alternative Rock music that was just barely giving me what I didn’t know I wanted. This electric Bass music was so complicated and emotionally charged that lyrics weren’t even necessary to me anymore; I was hearing what I wanted to be said along with the reply right behind it.
The rise of Festival Trap caught my attention in 2010 when I discovered artists like Buku, Carnage, and Psychic Type to keep my ears busy with a genre that almost provided the inverse of what Dubstep delivered but strangely hitting on all of the satisfying parts I cared about as a dance music listener. This new space opened my mind up to new possibilities for the music, it had me visualizing more while listening and adding in elements of the track in my head — even holding consistent remixes of tracks in my mind that would play each time I heard the song, simply because it was better to me. I just didn’t have a way to hear what was in my mind just yet. I couldn’t fathom how music like this was made, convinced the producers had to each be geniuses to pull it off. I’ve since been shown otherwise. Kidding!
The year 2016 was a big one for me, both in spirit and art. For the first time, I was truly forging my own spiritual path, one of self-love and development, of introspection and connectivity. I finally felt that my connection with the Divine was real, important, and uplifting me in every way from my mental health to approach on life. I made a sharp angle from the religious path I was offered in birth, but this new alignment has given me what I needed all along and led me straight to every best circumstance while sheltering me from more than I wanted to know about.
With a new sense of purpose in life and confidence in myself, I met a friend of like-mind, fellow artist April Apineru, who introduced me to the people who would be my first friends as an independent adult and supported me in living as my true-self and my ventures into creative fields. I took up my interest in modeling and acting with some classes and photoshoots with photographers like Diego Gonzalez, Kelley Channell Studios, and April too! In the same year, April’s cousin invited us to go to what would be my first rave, and I immediately fell in love with the scene and had to come to another.
My love for the EDM environment and the music itself led me to purchasing my first DJ controller, the Pioneer DDJ-400, back in 2019. I started playing almost only Hybrid Trap but fell in love with trippy-sounding Experimental Bass which quickly overtook my style and began defining key elements of my sound. Ever since then, I’ve been working heavily on my skills and brand with a certainty that this is exactly what I want to do for the long haul. Even when I’m older and DJing becomes exhausting, I want to still have my hand in making sure great music gets heard by those who love it the most or don’t know they love it yet!
While I was waiting for my first gig, I decided that I would book myself and my friends while I was at it, so I held two events at underground locations all about DJs hanging out and spinning for fun while networking. These were very fun and were a perfect way for me to connect with local talent I admired! Great times and relationships blossomed herefrom, and I still think of them fondly. I didn’t have to wait too long to get on stage, however, and I am grateful to CHREE and Lyra B for having me on for B2B sets which marked my first venue performances!
In 2021, I began working with a media and press company called Emerald Summers Presents after they booked me for my first solo-venue-gig, and they have been a large part of building my brand to what it is and transitioning me into life as a working DJ in Atlanta. I am able to do so much for my local EDM community now with amazing partners like this one, and there’s nothing that satisfies me quite like that. My work with ESP has lead me to performing at clubs such as Believe Music Hall as well as a number of lounge venues around Atlanta, which is one of my favorite atmospheres.
This year, I am very excited to be releasing some of the first official ALAANIEL original tracks and collaborations, as well as planning out performances and even traveling out of state to perform! The brand is coming along well, with new additions I’m hoping to announce later in the year as well. I appreciate each person who has supported me in any way in my career, as it takes more than even a team to pull momentum like this — it takes a community.
We all face challenges, but looking back would you describe it as a relatively smooth road?
It has not been an easy road for me. In 2008 at age 13, I came to terms with the fact that I wasn’t straight, but it caused me a lot of self-loathing due to my inherited religion and faced an issue with self-harm. I started writing lyrics secretly to cope with how I was feeling about boys but stayed in constant fear that they would be found as there was no privacy or boundaries in my home at the time, so I always kept them in odd, inconspicuous places — the same that I did with my rasor and lighter. Self-harm is unlike many addictions in that it doesn’t just go away. My relapse in 2017 shows how long the compulsion can linger. In moments of high stress, guilt, or depression, the skin on my arms and legs will tingle like static-electricity, begging for a sharp pain to satisfy the itch. It still happens. I used to wear rubber bands on my wrists for a quick snap, but eventually I set them aside to strengthen my willpower against it.
It wasn’t until 2012 that I finally came to terms that I was gay and discovered terms describing non-binary genders for the first time, which gave me peace with my androgynous, internal self. For anyone wondering, I am an androsexual (masculine-attracted) non-binary (angrogynous) person who accepts he, she, or they pronouns. After one of my friend’s parents read through private messages about my sexual identity, they outed me to my own parents, which really marked a serious separation between myself and them, and even led to a few times of being kicked out. To this day, I’m essentially still not allowed to be gay and live there. To them, it’s a choice made out of spite and not a real-life sexuality, so to them it’s only a matter of me swearing it off. It really bends my mind thinking about all of the mental complexity involved.
My spiritual connection has led me to all of the best people and opportunities and seriously helped me cope with depression and anxiety in many ways, but getting to this point was not easy either. In my indoctrination growing up, numerous interlocking belief systems were placed into my head and parentally not allowed out or to change, and would cause cognitive dissonance when they were questioned. All of this forced me into being a quiet, reserved person. My mind was full of thoughts, but no one to discuss them with without getting shut down or alienized.
As an adult, I started raving and producing more but was dealing with the height of my depression and panic attacks, all the way down to having my exit plan ready and deadlined. It was actually at a rave, surrounded by friends, music that I loved, and energy that inspired me that I decided that if I was going to be alive, I was going to spend it doing what I loved the most and not tolerate anything else. To me, that meant basically moving in. Yes, moving into the rave! I looked up at the DJ and immediately knew my role. In a wider sense too, I decided I was going to spend my life doing what I loved the most and not tolerate anything else.
Thanks for sharing that. So, maybe next you can tell us a bit more about your work?
Although I’ve always been a jack of all trades, learning and becoming proficient in many skills over the years, ALAANIEL in capitals is an Experimental and Hybrid Bass DJ and music producer at the core. From streams online to events near you, I spin Freeform Bass, an assortment of Trap, gnarly Dubstep and Riddim, all the way down to silky Deep Dubstep and Space Bass. In the studio, sound design is my full cup of tea. Creating rich, textured original sounds brings me endless joy and is a meditative process for me, to the point where I need timers to remind myself to give my ears a break!
Along my path, I’ve been developing skills in graphic design, web design, prose, marketing, and sound engineering, flow dancing, and event organizing. The arts in this world are each so valuable and fascinating, sometimes I just have to try it. If I end up loving it, then I need to be good at it because of the drive to see through the aspirational ideas for it that I already want to experience.
Before we let you go, we’ve got to ask if you have any advice for those who are just starting out?
Honestly, this is the best opportunity to talk about one particular obstacle that I’m still learning to overcome; whatever it is that you do if you want to really take it somewhere and you’re able to do it right now, put it out there even if it’s not perfect. Even if it’s not yet matching the vision you have for it in the future, let the people see it where it’s at right now. For me, that means pulling myself out of the rabbit hole of perfectionism and accepting great music as great music, not music that can forever be made better and better. People are out there who want to see what you’ve got right now, even if it’s not finished. In a way, it makes the finished version even more satisfying because your audience got to watch it grow up in a way.
I cannot stress enough how much further along I would be in my career if this was something I had fully understood and practiced all along. For as long as I’ve been an artist, I’ve always had a bad habit of withholding my art under the pretense of “just wait until they see what I can do next,” having learned and gained new ideas from the project I was just working on. Having spoken to many other artists, this is a very common mental plague that I believe is blocking the world from so many marvelous works by more people than you may expect; perhaps even your buddy who likes to doodle or finger drum on the desk. A little council, encouragement, and support from friends can truly turn a home hobbyist into the rockstar they want to be.
Another important piece of advice to artists getting started is to always own your work as much as possible. Remember that it’s about YOUR art, so that might look like limiting collaborative works to own more of it and have more control of its handle and care, or distribution and sales. For musicians, it’s very tempting to sign yourself (i.e., more than one track or album) to a label straight away to maximize momentum and secure success, but that success and those rights are now in someone else’s hands. A lot of this, however, is in doing your due diligence of company research and not handling contracts if you’re not also a lawyer. Imagine creating great music that you can’t release because a label who doesn’t support you like they used to has you contracted for however many years, and you don’t even own the music. You work tirelessly for your art and what you care about. That is very much yours and it should feed you right back. There will be a time and place when it will make sense to sign something to a label, so until then, prepare your brand for success, find a music law professional you trust to review your contracts, and see what all you can’t do yourself. I know you’ll be surprised.
Lastly, if you are an LGBT or questioning person in any arts industry, please know that there is more than enough space for you here in the arts community and a variety of networks to usher you wherever you want to go. From artist communities to event organizers to gallery owners and distribution networks, you have every reason to feel safe to succeed while showing to the world exactly who you are. Sometimes it’s a journey to understand who that is, but I would love to see that journey of growth and pride.
Contact Info:
- Email: business.alaandavis@gmail.com
- Website: www.alaanielpress.com
- Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/alaanielmusic/
- Facebook: https://www.fb.com/Alaaniel/
- Twitter: https://twitter.com/alaaniel
- Youtube: https://www.youtube.com/c/AlaanielDavis
- SoundCloud: https://soundcloud.com/alaaniel
- Other: https://linktr.ee/alaanielmusic
Image Credits
Emerald Summers Presents, Kelley Channell Studios
