Keaton Prescott’s daily routine has changed significantly since the new year. Right now he says it’s “music, meetings and baby” after the birth of his first child just a few weeks ago. “The new grind is making music somewhat quietly and, you know, taking care of a little one.”
Prescott records under the moniker Sullivan King and is a rare mashup of DJ and metal musician. The Los Angeles-based multi-instrumentalist/producer and solidified guitar wizard is setting out to shatter the mold and disrupt the electronic world one lick at a time. Lifting the brash and rugged energy of bass music off the dance floors and the power of metal and hard rock from the stadiums, Sullivan King creates a musical mosh pit built entirely on rapid-paced, neck-snapping dubstep, intensely shredding guitars and a bold live show that pushes the boundaries of modern music performance.
Keaton says electronic music was his first real love, finding artists on YouTube and then discovering names like Swedish House Mafia and Wolfgang Gartner. His interest in metal was more of a slow burn he says.
“I liked punk stuff, you know, lighter punk, like Green Day. American Idiot had kind of just come out in 2004-2005. And that was like my first introduction to heavier distorted guitars and things like that. And after Green Day was like, AC/DC, my dad showed me a lot of classic rock Van Halen, Scorpions, things like that. And slowly that kind of builds up a tolerance for metal. I wasn’t like super into it right away, but that turned into Avenged Sevenfold, Bullet For My Valentine, Atreyu and then, you know, Pantera and Metallica and things like that.”
It was in 2012 at the now-defunct Sunset Strip Music Festival, however, when he witnessed the analog spirit of punk rock come to life via the digital workings of a DJ and his decks as the notorious Steve Aoki manned the stage. Suddenly, it all clicked.
“It was a moment of me kind of being like, well, I want to do something. What is it that I wish was in the world that I wasn’t hearing? And like, obviously there were bands, I See Stars, The Browning. There were some bands that were doing a lot of electronic stuff or adding dubstep, The Devil Wears Prada, things like that. There were bands that were definitely adding it in, but there wasn’t a DJ that was creating compositions or songs that embodied that. There were some artists, but it wasn’t really to the calibre of dubstep that I maybe was looking for. And so it was kind of more of like what I wanted to hear in the world, you know, no-one’s doing it then I might as well try and see what happens with it.”
And it seems to be working.
Sullivan King is now playing much bigger venues and has almost a million monthly Spotify listeners, and he brings his tour to Montreal’s MTelus this weekend.
On the live front, Sullivan King truly comes to life as he clashes analog traditions with digital attitude via a proper one-man show. His live setup-composed of Pioneer CDJ decks, a microphone, a laptop running Ableton, his faithful Schecter guitar and a Guitar Wing from Livid Instruments, which he uses to manipulate and trigger pre?-recorded loops and sounds-allows him to adopt the best of both worlds into his shows and create unique performances every single time via impromptu guitar solos and varying track selections on the DJ end.
Montreal Rocks caught up with Keaton from his home in Los Angeles to chat about music and how he’s adapting to life as a new dad.
Watch the full interview below:
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