Little Did We Know…

We knew Emily Stamer, aka Luci, before she had played with Excision, Yheti, Shlump, Riot Ten, WOOLI, Trampa, Liquid Stranger, G-REX, The Widdler, Digital Ethos, or Conrank. Before her name had lit up the bright marquees of Thunderdome, Zen Awakening, Fractal Beach, Asteria Music Fest, or The Untz, she was a student. Luci came to Recording Connection with a burning desire to become a DJ. With us, Luci went from a novice to a dubstep queen. Back in 2020, right before graduation, we sat down with this about-to-be-star to chat about her life and hopes for her future.

For many great artists, their journey starts with an epiphany. For Luci, that moment came while attending Electric Daisy Carnival in Orlando, Florida.

“I saw Bassnectar’s performance and I literally just had a weird connection with it,” she explained. “I felt like I should be up there instead of watching. I really felt like I was destined to be performing.”

Luci had been struggling in college, unhappy and studying hospitality. Seeing how miserable she was, her mom started researching schools around Orlando for her to learn music production.

“[One] was Full Sail, which was super expensive,” she recalled. “Unless I wanted to run my parents in debt forever, I wasn’t going to do that. And there was also First Academy, but they were very strict [with scheduling]. I needed somebody who was just focused on what I wanted to do.”

That “somebody” turned out to be Recording Connection mentor Joey Paranoia, a well-known Orlando DJ who specializes in teaching Ableton. Once she met him for her initial interview, Luci says she was sold.

“Everyone knows who Joey Paranoia is around here,” she said, with a palpable amount of admiration. “Every time I say that he’s my mentor, ‘Joey Paranoia,’ everyone’s like, ‘Yeah, you’re good.’”

It didn’t take long for Luci to see the substance behind Joey’s reputation and his abilities as a mentor. He honed in on her desire to perform and schooled her in both mixing and production.

“We just vibe very well together,” she said. “I am so extremely lucky to have somebody who knows the music business. He’s taught me everything. I couldn’t ask for somebody better, I can’t even imagine having anybody else, because he knows what touring is like, he knows what I should expect.”

Even though she still considers herself a newbie, under Joey’s tutelage she is already starting to develop her own persona and niche as a DJ in the Orlando club scene. “At first I was just learning how to really mix,” she said. “He was like, ‘You should really learn [Ableton] Live, like mixing Live.’ So now I’m one of the only DJ’s in Orlando that mixes off Ableton Live, which is really cool. It’s completely crazy and disparate and colorful…I’m considered unique in the music industry in Orlando right now, which is pretty awesome because everyone [else] uses CDJs…but I still prefer Ableton.”

Luci is also currently working on recording and producing a new EP, which she describes as “space bass.” “It’s very out of this world, very futuristic sounding,” she said. “I’m trying to find another word than grimey, but it’s very dirty sounding. I don’t know how to describe it. It’s a crazy sound.”

True to form, Joey is using the EP project as a means to teach her to produce. “Producing is a whole other animal from mixing on Live,” she said. “You don’t stop learning how to produce. I feel like there’s always something you can know…[Joey]’s really helped me remain calm and realize my true potential with all of this. In our lessons right now we just go over my EP and he sees what I’ve added, and he tweaks it or says, ‘You should do this.’”

Well on her way to fulfilling her dream of becoming a professional DJ, Luci lives for the moments where her sets feel cosmically aligned. “[It’s] the best feeling in the world,” she said, reminiscing on a recent set. “I literally had people coming up to me like, ‘Dude, that was so awesome.’…Having that beautiful moment where literally I had the whole crowd, I pulled in the most amount of people…It was really cool. People were asking for stickers and my SoundCloud…Just hearing that, having somebody not know me at all, is the best feeling.”

As for the future, after graduating from Recording Connection, Luci hopes to relocate to pursue her career on the road. “I just want to tour,” she said. “I don’t even care if I’m on a bus and I’m hating life and I’m eating Hot Pockets…I don’t care. I just want to be going around the country sharing my music and meeting new people…That’s where I want to be.”