RB Sits Down With Audien

Nate Rathbun, better known as DJ/Producer Audien, takes off his beanie and jacket after stepping into Wild Knight this past Friday. He steps up the booth and pumps up the original mix of “You’re So Cool” by Joe Garston. The packed club loses their minds.

“I love clubs because it’s really intimate and you can feel how many people are in the room and what people are digging,” Audien explained before the show. “I know that I have a bunch of tunes that I want to play. I always feel the crowd out first and see which track will work for that moment.”

The bass and beat pound against club goers. House track “Wakanda” by Dimitri Vegas & Like Mike tosses bodies all over the floor. Audien is killing it. Yet, just two months ago, a bouncer would have stopped him if he tried to enter as a regular guest through the front door.

Joe Garston – You’re So Cool *OUT NOW*

“It was a problem for a while,” he said. “I just turned 21 in January so for a while, I was the underage DJ. It feels cool to be in an adult crowd though. I don’t feel like a teenager anymore. I feel like an adult.”

For a while, it wasn’t a problem. Audien’s “music ADD” had him focused on producing killer tracks long before he started DJ-ing.

“DJ-ing is an outlet to play my own tracks, and the tracks of the people I like,” said Audien. “DJ-ing has been a chance to put the sounds in front of people instead of just on the internet.”

At long last, Rathbun throws down his hit from December “Wayfarer” and the Audien fans throughout the building are vindicated, hearing their carefully crafted masterpiece, first given to the world as the first song to ever play on Above & Beyond‘s new Group Therapy Radio Show.

Audien – Wayfarer

“In my opinion, that’s better than any Record of the Week. That’s an honor,” he says with an overjoyed smile. “I’m really happy that [Above & Beyond] did that. It definitely gave the track a good jump start.

“My most exciting moments come from the internet and not just from playing…I love when people play my tracks so I want to keep making more track that they’ll play…Just sitting at home and seeing the track lists. That’s exciting for me.”

As Audien’s career continues to explode, so does the versatility of his sound between trance to progressive house. From his view, the genre’s themselves change just as rapidly as his rise.

“I’ve been kind of out of tune with the core trance for a long time. Right now, it’s so hard to define what trance really is and most people will say trance is 138 (bpm), uplifting trance. That’s kind of not as alive as the new progressive house and trance. They call it trouse. I don’t call it trouse. I call it music.”