Get to Know Your DJs
DJ Zone on the 1s and 2s
While “DJ Zone” may not immediately ring a bell, the names Aesop Rock and Macklemore surely do. Both artists have called upon the Portland-based turntablist to not only tour with them, but also cut it up on their records, including Aesop’s most recent, The Impossible Kid.
Born in Portland, Oregon, DJ Zone (real name Patrick Lorenz) was raised in a musical household. His grandmother played violin and piano as a little girl and got a scholarship to Julliard School of the Arts, the prestigious New York City music school. She inspired his love of classical music, jazz and ragtime. His mother raised him on ‘60s and ‘70s classic rock, which helped mold his vast knowledge of all different types of genres. For a DJ to be any good, that’s crucial.
After meeting several key players in the Northwest hip-hop scene, he was off and running. From The Chicharones and Grayskul to Aesop Rock and Macklemore, his skills are in high demand right now, but that clearly hasn’t changed who he is. Humble and always down to tell his story, DJ Zone explained his origins, getting his first set of turntables and how he ended up on the road with Macklemore. —Kyle Eustice
RAPstation (Kyle Eustice): How did you get into hip-hop and turntablism?
DJ Zone: When I was 4 or 5-years-old, my mom's boyfriend at the time was a rapper from San Jose called The Cisco Kidd. He would leave all sorts of mixtapes around the house. I used to listen to them on my way to school, and that's when I started getting exposed to stuff like Jazzy Jeff and Fresh Prince, Cash Money and Marvelous Marvin, MC Hammer, Kris Kross, Bel Biv Devoe, Naughty By Nature, Das EFX, Run-DMC, Rakim, etc. We also used to watch movies together like New Jack City and Beat Street.
When did you hear scratching for the first time?
I remember hearing scratching for the first time on one of those mixtapes and falling in love with it. I would rewind the tape over and over again and try to imagine what was making that sound. I thought it was some kind of computer, but it had this funky human element to it, and I just couldn't figure it out.
How did you figure it out?
Fast forward to when I was 7, I saw Roc Raida (RIP) on SNL and it all clicked. I was like, ‘Oh! It's a record that's making that sound!’ And I remember it all making perfect sense. Like I didn't know everything that was going on, but I understood the concept of the crossfader right away. I was like, ‘So when it's on that side it's that turntable, and that side it's that turntable, and the middle is both.’
Did you get turntables right away?
I immediately ran to my mom's record player and started scratching “Hotel California.” Then she came home and was of course like, ‘What are you doing!? You're gonna break it!’ When I was 10, I had my own turntable and fashioned an on/off switch with a paper clip by cutting the speaker wire, so when I pressed the paper clip together it would connect the two ends. It was crude, but I used to take long tones or stuff like Disney's Sounds of the Haunted House and practice transforming. I wanted to get a real turntable setup, but it was too expensive, so when I was 13 I started working at the bar my mom managed.
So you were trying to earn money to buy a set?
Yeah, on Tuesdays, I did magic and on Saturdays I did disco night, which I tried turning into hip-hop night, but we ended up settling on ’70s night. After a few months they shut down and I ended up getting hired as a magician at Huber's, which quickly took all my attention away from music because I started making really good money—especially for my age. Then when I was 15, I remembered the whole reason I started working in the first place was to save up for turntables, so I got a cheap setup from a friend of mine, which I used until I felt confident dropping some real money on Technics when I was 17. That's when I started really focusing on the craft of DJing, mixing and scratching.
How did you hone the craft?
I shut myself up in my apartment for the next two years and practiced 14-16 hours a day, paying my way through life by doing magic on the weekends. When I was 19, I was approached by some old friends—Flawless and Docta Suse—from high school to start a group with two other people, Max Graves and Jon Doe. That pulled me back out into the real world outside of my apartment. Our group at the time was called Lethal Audio. Eventually Max and I started our own group, MastandMind, and we met up with Max's old friend Daps, and we started NightCrawlers. That's when I met Sleep and he started taking me out on tour, where I started meeting the rest of Oldominion—Bishop I, Onry, JFK, Pale Soul, Zeb, Smoke, NyQuil, etc.
How did you end up with The Chicharones?
Sleep introduced me to Josh Martinez and we brought back Sleep and Josh's group The Chicharones. In the midst of that we started a band called Eddie Valiant with Max, David Lincoln Mann, Scotty Del, and Chase Burton on drums. Chase also plays drums for The Chicharones and Sleep, and we also have a DJ/drummer combo called ChaseandtheDragon. Later down the road, we started a crew in Portland called Big Bang that ended up transforming into our label Proper Knocks, consisting of DMLH, Gepetto, Daps, Everybody Knows, Cray, Oculus, Abadawn, Max Graves, Scotty Del and Diction Uno. There's much more to the story that I'm skipping over, but that's the basics.
Are there any DJs you admire?
There are too many to name. I'm a huge fan of turntablism and try to keep up with the movement as much as time will allow, but it's easier to talk about the DJs that inspired me before I became a DJ myself. My biggest influences growing up were Babu, D-Styles, Jazzy Jeff, Cash Money, DJ Quest, and DJ Jeff. They're the ones that I used to listen to and say, I want to do that.
How did you end up on Macklemore's tour?
I've known Macklemore and XP for about nine years or so now. I met them back when I first started doing a lot of shows. Daps, DMLH and I put a show together at the Satyricon for our NightCrawlers album release, and put Macklemore on the bill, which is around the same time I met XP. They had a group together called Step Cousins and were doing tracks with our homies Sandpeople. I got to know Macklemore a little better while I was DJing for Grayskul. We did a tour opening up for Living Legends and Macklemore was Grayskul's special guest, doing hypes and a verse or two in the set.
Do you remember what it was like pre-The Heist then?
The last time I saw him before he went full on supernova was at SXSW and I DJ’ed for him opening up for The Chicharones at this little bar. XP is in Oldominion and I'd done multiple shows with him and kicked it here and there, but started really getting more involved with his music a couple years ago when he moved to Portland and was staying at Sleep's house. I was basically living at Sleep's too and recording 24/7. Sleep, XP and I were working on multiple projects all the time, and then XP got called back up to Seattle to help with the writing of Mack's new album This Unruly Mess I've Made. When he got the news that he would be opening on the tour, he asked me if I would DJ for him, which I graciously accepted.
