Communication major and art history minor senior Alix Seskin—also known as “Lix Rich”—combines her love for music and film in her job as a DJ. Seskin spends her weekends entertaining and hyping audiences up with her remarkable skills. Seskin explained that her career as a DJ started when she was a freshman spending weekends at the Inn Between Tavern. She noted that she didn’t like the music that they were playing, so she decided to take matters into her own hands. Seskin’s ex-boyfriend sparked her interest in house music and with that inspiration, she decided to purchase a DJ controller and software to begin creating her own music.
Seskin first got a job working at the IB, but after it closed, she started playing at The Statesmen after performing at a party there. In addition to The Statesmen—where Seskin currently works—she also covers some Geneseo Late Knight events at the Knight Spot.
Although she is now well-versed as a DJ, Seskin explained that her talent and passion have only been recently cultivated. “I wasn’t really into music, surprisingly, [during] my senior year of high school,” she said. “And then freshman year, it was just my boyfriend’s influence. Then, on top of that, trying to be my own person and trying to be my own person in college and then I found who I was … I found my niche.”
Seskin noted that her love of DJ-ing is due largely to the gratification she gets from performing and seeing crowd members enjoying the music she plays. “Personally, I’m never in it for the money … but I’m really into it for the music more than anything else,” Seskin said. “I like making people happy and … the high you get off of playing music for people that they love … it’s compensation enough.”
Although she has not really created many original songs, one of her favorite remixes is a mashup between Avicii’s “Street Dancer” and David Guetta’s “Louder Than Words.” Seskin’s favorite artists range from DJ Dillon Francis to Odessa and earlier Avicii. Generally, she prefers to listen to techno and deep house music. Her inspirations for her sound while DJ-ing, however, are a little different.
“When I was growing up, [my family] always listened to a lot of Michael Jackson, a lot of funk and a lot of Grateful Dead,” Seskin said. “So I was always growing up around nice guitar riffs and stuff like that, so I’ve really liked to listen to funk mixed with house.” Seskin specifically cited artist Griz as one of her current funk inspirations.
Seskin’s unique spin on DJ-ing with funk stems from a desire to celebrate both music and creativity. “I love using [funk in DJ’ing]. I think it’s the perfect song to get people up, but also dancing,” she said. “It’s actual music because people are playing saxophones and doing the drums and it’s not just technical DJ toggling.”
Seskin added that her favorite part about DJ-ing is seeing the reaction she gets from audiences. “You get such a high from just vibe-ing off the people at the bar and then playing what they want to hear,” she said. “You hear the screams like, ‘Oh my God, I love this song,’ and you’re just like, ‘Yes I did that, this is me.’ And it’s such a nice feeling, making people happy.”
Although she enjoys her hobby as of DJ-ing, Seskin plans on attending film school next semester for cinematography. She added that she hopes to combine her love of both film and music to possibly combine them by making music videos. “Music is such a great starting off point for everything I want to do in the future,” Seskin said.
Whether it will be through film or music—or both—Seskin’s distinct artistic presence will certainly continue to entertain audiences in her future adventures.