There’s a dark sound emanating from the DJ booth orchestrated by 20-year-old Isabelle Rezazadeh, otherwise known as Rezz. It’s a creeping sense of dread and despair mixed with dance beats to create a mood so sinister and heavy that audience members can’t help but scream their lungs out, either with glee or horror.
In a short span of about two years, Rezz has brought this vibe to clubs and venues all across the world, releasing music on huge electronic record labels such as Skrillex’s NEST HQ and most recently, “The Silence Is Deafening EP” on mau5trap.
These new songs go through a wide variety of styles, from the screeching, murderous sounds of “Edge” to an army of machines taking over in “Methodology,” Rezz is eager to show off her formidable talent as a producer.
“This music that I make comes so naturally out of me, it’s creepy — like it’s really weird how naturally it comes out of me,” she said. “I can’t even explain to you how much I connect with it.”
On the phone, her presence is the exact opposite of her music: cheerful, with a laid-back persona. She had no problem talking a mile a minute with pure, unforced passion about her music.
“Me as a person, I’m so happy and so vibrant." Rezz said. "When you talk to me and see me in a room, sometimes I can just be such an optimistic, happy person. It would shock people that I was the one creating the music that I do.”
She’s on tour with Destructo, creator of “G-house," and Justin Martin, but she had a few days off to spend some downtime in her hometown of Niagara Falls, Canada, a rare occurrence for the busy DJ and producer.
“I have no time to chill with people anymore, which is cool,” she said.
See more: Destructo explains why people hate 'Techno' and talks HARD Day of the Dead
Rezazadeh started learning how to produce and DJ right before she turned 19 and just like that, she became obsessed with making a wide variety of dark and creepy sounds. However, before touring around the world as Rezz, she said music wasn’t a big part of her life.
“When I was still in high school, near the end of it, I had literally no idea what I wanted to do with my life,” she said. “This whole thing has just been the craziest, weirdest thing that has ever happened. It just made me realize how anything can happen at any moment, and you can find passion at any time.”
Flash forward a couple years, and Rezz is a slow-burning dark horse in a sea of new electronic musical talent. She is already hungry for more than just the average club performance and is outspoken about her upcoming plans.
“I can’t even tell you how clear my vision is for the future and the exact vibe I want the room to feel when I’m performing,” she said. “I want the whole room, like the energy in the room to completely change. I want it to be such a noticeable feeling.”
Rezz is also resilient in her fight against sexist Internet trolls, an unfortunate effect of a male-dominated EDM industry, but it isn’t anything that keeps her up at night.
“I produce all my music," she said. "I do all the technical sides to it. Nobody helps me. Nobody ever helped me. When you actually do all the work yourself, you can’t really be baffled and thrown off by these comments on the Internet because you are so confident because you can prove it to anyone at any time.”
Everyone wants to add their own reason as to why or how a normal Canadian high school student decided to be a DJ and producer while simultaneously becoming a tastemaker of all things evil and mysterious within her music. As the creator of this music, only Rezz can summarize her sound in an almost philosophical and introspective way.
“I think everybody does have good and bad sides,” she said. “I feel like in my case, the dark side — to me — it gets released through my music. And also, I just think dark, scary things are really cool.”
Rezz will be performing Saturday night at the the Monarch Theatre in downtown Phoenix on the SHIP2SHIP tour with Destructo and Justin Martin. Click here for more information and ticket.
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Reach the reporter at jhgolds2@asu.edu or follow @misterjacobgold on Twitter.
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