Adrian Cortes

Adrian is shy (when it comes to attractive women), and always cautious. He is a multi-genre (initially exclusively Techno, however he has expanded to few other genres since late 2022 with Breaks/Breakbeat and 2023 with Tech trance) disc jockey and music producer, (animation) voice actor. For a brief while, he sported the U-or-V shaped book flap hair style. However, lately he cut and shortened the length of his hair for a comb over he's been sporting lately.

He was born on December 18, 2007 to Mexican-born parents who were seniors during high school (his father was 18 and his mother was 17). Growing up, Adrian was somewhat of a big fan of animations, especially cartoons and object shows, music, especially around the 2010's on the radio, which he is nostalgic about, and mobile/video games such as Angry Birds, Super Mario, Roblox, Minecraft. As for animation, he was a big fan of the Pink Panther, Spongebob Squarepants, The Fairy Oddparents, Adventure Time, Regular Show, Veggietales, you know the rest. As for internet animation, he was also into Eddsworld, object shows such as Battle for Dream Island, Inanimate Insanity, Brawl of the Objects, Object Overload, many others, and possibly animator Vivziepop. He also acknowledges adult animated shows and couple pilots growing up such as The Simpsons, Family Guy, South Park, American Dad, The Cleveland Show, Rick and Morty, Hazbin Hotel, and Helluva Boss (the last two as he reached into his early 10s).

In Summer of 2017, Adrian started to have an interest in Electronic dance music. While he initially became a fan of the festival side of EDM (big room and electro house to be exact), by the end of that summer however, his interest steered towards House music (specifically Deep house and Tech house) thanks to artists such as Klangkuenstler (Note: Klangkuenstler, prior to switching to Techno in early 2018 and later Schranz in the early 2020's, was a mostly-Tech house artist), Green Velvet, Eli Brown (Another note: Eli, prior to the early 2020's switching to mostly Techno, was also another DJ that also formerly played mostly Tech House), and labels like Toolroom and Defected. By spring break of next year, he started practicing DJing and mixing tracks through With These Handz, a disc jockey academy and music school he attended afterschool in his home town. Adrian eventually started to perform sets at birthday parties, quinceaneras, and a few public events as a mobile DJ.

By the end of summer 2019, he became interested in Techno music, though he played some Techno tracks in some of his sets he thought was "Tech house" prior to that time such as "Your Mind" by Adam Beyer and Bart Skils, "Mortalis" by Klangkuenstler, "Rogue" by Spektre, "Gefallene Engel" by Obscure Shape & SHDW (played at 126 BPM), "Diffraction Angle" by Flug, "Clap Your Hands" and "Vapour" both by Slam. However, he couldn't just switch the tracklist to fully Techno, so Adrian had to sprinkle in a couple Techno tracks in between House tracks. From there, the amount of Techno music being played in his sets started to gradually increase. By the start of March of next year (2020), the tracklists were about 60 to 70% Techno. However in the same month, COVID-19 was declared a pandemic, meaning his future sets had to be cancelled.

In April of the same year, a month after quarantine started, Adrian uploaded his first hour and a half-long set on YouTube, which took place in his room. The set, being full of known Techno tracks and remixes, ranging from new releases at the time, to obliviously known tracks at the time, dating back as late 2016, received few views when it was first uploaded. As months went on and Adrian continued to do at-home DJ sets once at the end of every month, it garnered tens of thousands of views (now sitting around 600k), resulting in his channel steadily growing in subscribers. By Summer of 2020, he left his house roots behind and the sound has turned dark and somewhat futuristic ("imagine saying the last part with a dark tone" - Summit9999, the creator of this bot). His last at-home set was uploaded on the end of March 2022

In December, he released his first extended play on his 13th birthday, officially and independently on music services such as Spotify, Apple Music, SoundCloud, etc. By the next year, he started to release a few extended plays on a few labels known across the Techno community, however, some of the tracks Adrian released were mostly independent, and although by then he was already getting his name out there within the Techno music community, he didn't get well known outside that community until November when he produced a track for the pilot soundtrack (or mini album) of the new series at the time, Murder Drones (as mentioned earlier) (written, produced, and directed by Liam Vickers, creator of Cliffside), which was released on the 10th, with the rest of the soundtrack composed by AJ Dispirito. This originated from a commission by the Australian animation studio Glitch Productions during the summer of that year while Adrian was visiting the rest of his family in Mexico. Ever since then, Adrian steadily started to become well-known in not only the Dance/Electronic music realm, but also in general from about the start of 2022 to now, remixing tracks by well-established artists such as Moby, Depeche Mode, Calvin Harris, David Guetta, Disclosure, Alok, Tiësto, Joel Corry, Stephan Bodzin, M.I.K.E. Push, Kaskade, and many others, to the point where his remixes were able to be released via major Dance/EDM record labels (or "big players in Dance/Electronic music" as he describes them).

He has released works through We Are The Brave (Alan Fitzpatrick's label), Filth on Acid, Acrane Music (Eli Brown's label), Drumcode, Factory 93, Fe Chrome, Autektone Records, Terminal M, Say What? Records (label based in Antwerp), Set About Music, Second State Audio (via compilation album SUM 10), Phobiq, and surprisingly ZTT Records. His remixes have been released via Armada Music, Big Beat Records, Astralwerks, Mau5trap, Anjunabeats, Positiva Records, Ultra Records, PMR Records, etc.

Adrian has collaborated with other fellow Techno artists such as HI-LO (Oliver Heldens' Techno moniker), Reinier Zonneveld, T78, Space 92, Cosmic Boys, Teenage Mutants, UMEK, Joyhauser, ROBPM, Weska, Bart Skils, Victor Ruiz, Dok & Martin, Ramon Tapia, Spektre, and many others, and have cited a few of them as influences switching to Techno. He has also collaborated with artists outside of Techno, such as Stephen Kirkwood, Hannah Liang, Bryan Kearney, Richard Durand, D72, and many others. He has garnered about 6 and a 1/2 (half) million monthly listeners on Spotify thanks to some of his remixes released, people discovering him from his work in various animated works, DJs playing his tracks in sets and radio shows, etc. The number of listeners is expected to gradually increase as more people discover his music. Thankfully, he takes breaks from producing music, touring, and voice acting to focus on school work, grades, and self-esteem, especially around wintertime and a couple of months before May or June.

Due to Adrian being a minor (at age 17) however, he is unable to play at Tomorrowland, Ultra Music Festival, EDC, and many 18+/21+ music festivals. However he has played at some music festivals and fan conventions such as EXIT Festival (mts Dance Arena in 2022, 2023, and 2024, & Silent Disco in 2022), Glastonbury Festival (Silver Hades Stage), Vidcon, San Diego Comic Con, LVL UP EXPO, and others.

Adrian's influences came from obviously Dance/Electronic, but also (classic) rock/metal and classic funk/soul/R&B. He is nostalgic about top 40 and urban radio and music in the 2010s, though of course there were some that were bound to be cheesy and bad. Adrian was exposed to his mother's favorite music such as early 2000's r&b / hip hop and bands such as Red Hot Chili Peppers. He was also exposed to his father's music taste was a combination of crunk, 90's - early 2000s dirty rap, 90's west coast rap / Chicano rap / gangsta rap, and partially chopped and screwed. As for voice acting, his influences came from Tom Kenny, Mel Blanc, Steve Buscemi, Ving Rhames, Keith David, the Huang twins, Willlem Dafoe, etc.

[Prior to switching to Techno, the BPM range of his House sets was about 124 to 126] The BPM / Tempo range of his sets since switching to Techno: April - September 2020: 127 - 130 October - December 2020: 128 - 130 January - March 2021: 128 - 131 April - May 2021: 129 - 131 [From June 14 to July 14, he was on a hiatus for a month due to visiting his mother's side of family in Central Mexico] July - October 2021: 129 - 132 November 2021 - April 2022: 130 - 132 May - September 2022: 130 - 133 October - December 2022: 131 - 133 January - March 2023: 131 - 134 April - May 2023: 132 - 134 June 2023: 132 - 135 July 2023: 133 - 135 August 2023: 133 - 136 September - December 2023: 134 - 136 January - April 2024: 134 - 137 BPM May - August 2024: 134 - 138 BPM September - December 2024: 135 - 139 BPM