A new on-campus DJ has been taking our university’s party scene by storm; first-year Phuoc Pham, also known as DJ Micherin, has recently begun making a name for himself at Lawrence. Not to be confused with the Michelin Star system or the tire company, Pham’s DJ name, which also doubles as his online persona, is rather drawn from two completely unrelated and completely unexpected sources. “Micherin” takes the first part of “Michael Reeves,” one of his favorite YouTubers, and the name of one of his Dungeons & Dragons characters and smashes them together, creating a one-of-a-kind amalgamation that brands him with originality.
DJ Micherin started on his craft early on in life. When he was a middle schooler, he remembered being deeply interested in Martin Garrix’s EDM beats at the height of his popularity. His intense love for the artist led him down an “Alice-in-Wonderland”–type rabbit hole into the world of late 2010s electronic music. He soon decided to take his passion for the genre from passive to active; he wanted to interact with electronic music beyond just consuming it. To him, creating it seemed like a pretty good place to start.
DJ Micherin cites artists such as San Holo, Tiësto and Zedd — major players in the 2017-18 EDM scene — as early influences on his style. At Lawrence, he shouted out DJ Marcus and DJ Nimrod as two artists from the campus music scene he admires. Since he is a first-year, DJ Micherin has only gotten the chance to play a few gigs, namely at a recent Beta Theta Pi fraternity party. He described the Lawrence party scene as “modest” but “close-knit,” where partygoers get the best of both worlds: they don’t end up “partied out” after the weekend, but are also able to meet up frequently enough to get to know each other well. This is something he said he greatly enjoys about playing at campus functions.
Though he is only just starting to integrate himself into the party scene, DJ Micherin already has some clear musical goals in mind. He said that his main aim is to create a set that everyone—from those tearing up the dance floor in the middle of it all to the wallflowers bobbing along to the beats from the safety of the corners, and especially for the casual or first-time partygoers — so that everyone has a good time while he’s at the turntable. Curating the perfect set that appeals to every person at the party is at the forefront of DJ Micherin’s mind, who also counts himself in that bunch. For that reason, he said he often moves between certified crowd-pleasers and more underground tracks that he personally enjoys, shepherding the audience between songs they know and new, exciting musical territory.
DJ Micherin describes his style as non-conforming and polar, such as when he hard cuts from heavy techno tracks into slow ballads. These days, he singles out Porter Robinson as his primary influence, with more niche electronic artists such as acloudyskye and Jane Remover as other recent inspirations.
Since he is still only a first-year, DJ Micherin’s goal for growth as a musical artist is to continue to be invited to more functions and introduce more Lawrentians to the excitement of live music. Farther down the road, once he’s established himself on campus, DJ Micherin expressed that he’d like to get “more ambitious.” He left what he meant by that up to interpretation, since he doesn’t even know what that will come to mean for him, but it’s safe to say that when DJ Micherin starts to lean into this ambition, the Lawrence party scene might never be the same again.