‘Weird’ DJ zacheser Looks Forward to Year’s End

The 25-year-old Laurel, Md.-based DJ and producer “zacheser” is looking forward to a holiday season where he’s going to “actually get to see his industry friends when they’re not behind the decks.”

It’s been a big year for the DJ, born Zach Eser, traveling to Denver for the Cloak and Dagger Music Festival and releasing three remixes and an original production, all while gaining a national following via dance music website Hype Machine. However, there’s a lot more going on in the mind and soul of the creative force seen and heard locally behind the decks at U Street Music Hall, Soundcheck, Rock & Roll Hotel and more.

“I [became] interested in playing music for people when I was at St. Mary’s College [on the Chesapeake Bay in southeastern Maryland],” Eser says.

He describes that era as a good time to get into dance music. The DJ threw underground college parties and describes himself as the kid who grew up on his dad loving Hall & Oates, and dove headlong into sounds he’d never heard before.

When it comes to spinning in the nation’s capital, he says that “DC has an atmosphere where I feel the most comfortable. It was the first place where I felt that way, and knew I could be who I wanted to be and do what I want to do.”

As far as offering something more, he notes that while DJing, he realized that, “[t]here weren’t…well…there weren’t a lot of fat kids.”

“There were a lot of DJs with athletic builds,’” he says. “[And in]dance music culture, [coming] from a place where everybody was an outsider and not the world’s view of beautiful, I want to show that [plus-sized] people still fit in dance culture and can still pursue music.”

“I’m weird, wonky, play house music and [when I DJ], I wear makeup and loud colors,” he says. “I don’t necessarily treat holiday parties like a different gig, but I do think that they really present a lot of people, if they’re not already big partiers, with the opportunity to let their hair down and dance.”

As Eser looks forward to what’s on the horizon in the New Year, the DJ says he’s done a lot of the dirty work, and is now allowing himself to be happy, work on his sound and image, and play music that he describes as “unapologetically me.”  To sum things up, zacheser  “can’t be more stoked.”

Follow zacheser on Twitter @zacheser.