Aaron Michelson

Aaron Michelson got his start a decade before moving to Los Angeles, chopping together mixes on his father's Denon turntable with a slipmat made of stacked Kleenex. Just days after moving to Pittsburgh in the fall of 1997, he walked into the campus station WRCT-FM and signed up for a radio show, and was taken under the wing of local DJs Sean Goller and Matt Drown, known as the Techno Terrorists, the same mentors who years earlier had guided a young Damian Higgins toward becoming Dieselboy.

Michelson built his show, BleepbloopRadio, into one of Pittsburgh's leading progressive electronic mixshows, covering techno, house, drum and bass, and experimental sounds until his move to LA in June 2001. On the side, he released four mix CDs, including the tech-house Intellect/Aesthetic, the deep house and disco set Searching for Soul in the Funk Ambulance, the drum and bass mix Moving Violation, and the all-techno The Pittsburgh Left, and promoted several Pittsburgh club nights, including a six-month residency at Zythos called Grounded, the short-lived Pluto's night No Red Stopping with DJ Stream, and the Thursday afterhours party Liquified.

After relocating to Los Angeles, he became director of the Green House Record Pool, worked weekends at This Is Music record store, and held rotating residencies at The Derby's Twister night, The Room's Wank night, and the monthly Unit E parties. He released his first commercial mix CD, The 4 A.M. Sound of Tech House, on Run Recordings in 2002, played alongside artists including Mouse on Mars, Rithma, and Q-Burns Abstract Message.