Sorry for the late post y'all but on March 30th, I had the opportunity to photography for the NiT GriT with Two Fresh show at Neumo’s in Seattle, courtesy of Field Of Noise. I first saw NiT GriT, AKA 24 year old Danny Beall out of San Jose, CA, at a small venue in Santa Cruz, CA, called Motiv, opening for Datsik. He played a short 45 minute set for a relatively small crowd, but something about his music, combined with his demeanor on stage, left an imprint on my mind. Yearning for more, a few weeks later I found another NiT GriT show at a local Santa Cruz bar right down the street, called The Blue Lagoon. Yet this time, Danny was headlining. As his good friend Jasper NastyNasty finished his set, Danny took the stage. Now the room wasn’t exactly packed, but the stage took up nearly a quarter of the room. So Danny grabs the table and pulls it to the very back of the large stage, and then calls everyone up on to the stage for one of the most intimate shows I’ve experienced to date.

Now I don’t mean intimate in the way that first comes to mind, but if you’ve ever been face to face with one of your favorite DJ’s, feeding off the energy of every track they drop and every bass inducing hand gesture, then you’ll know what I mean

(That’s me in the white wife beater, sober, going absolutely nuts during NiT GriT)

Like I said before, there’s really just something about Danny’s music that draws you in and grabs at your heart, creating such a vast array of emotions through raw energy. That’s usually the type of language reserved for uplifting trance music, yet he’s able to capture all the same feelings and pack them into the face melting, gut wrenching basslines of grime, glitch and breakcore. Part of that is his utter creativity with synthesizers and his ability to create some of the gnarliest sounds ever conceived, while still staying melodic and never venturing too far off the musical path that many dubstep producers fall from, turning their music into simply noise.

The other half of what makes NiT GriT shows so amazing: Danny Beall the person. It’s as if he writes out every ounce of angst, fear, anger, heartbreak, etc. (hence the emotional aspect), onto his computer, and all that’s left in his live sets is smiles and joy. The only time his face wasn’t lit up with utter happiness was during a nasty drop, which twisted and contorted his sweat drenched face, portraying all of the emotions locked up in those computer generated noises. Then the second he opens his eyes back up and sees the crowd, or checks his computer to load up the next track, the smile is back in full force. He is more than just a DJ when on stage. He’s a presence; like a conductor in front of a symphony, directing every ebb and flow of his auditory onslaught.

We all know actions speak louder than words, and the most true thing I have gleaned from my experiences with Danny is that the dude is here for one thing and one thing only: the music. He’s not arrogant or self centered, which is quite common for someone in his place who rose from playing small shows in his hometown to touring the west coast with Two Fresh (who opened for Skrillex on his Mothership tour). And having a fan base of nearly 30,000 followers on Facebook has done nothing to alter the humbling modesty that Danny portrays wherever he goes. For example - I had the chance to talk with him after the show about our previous encounters and mutual acquaintances, and a group of kids came up asking for a picture. After apologizing for how sweaty he was, one of the girls proceeded to ask if she could have his shirt. He laughed, handed his lit cigarette to someone, then took off his trademark black wife beater and handed it to her. For more examples, just check his facebook page. It’s more than obvious that he cares about his fans and knows he wouldn’t be where he is without them. www.facebook.com/nitgrit

To use another cliché quote, imitation is the sincerest form of flattery. And as an aspiring DJ/Producer, if there’s anyone in this music industry that I’d most like to imitate, it’s NiT GriT. Now I don’t mean to sound like some fanboy who’s just met his idol and wont ever wash his hand after shaking their hand. Because to be honest, I’m a trance/house kid at heart, and I’ve met/gotten signatures from a ton of my musical heroes, including Armin, Above & Beyond, Gareth Emery, Tritonal, Cosmic Gate, Tiesto, etc. Yet to this day, the person who stands out above the rest in terms of humility and pure likeability as a person, and not some giant rockstar of today that headlines stages in front of hundreds of thousands of screaming fans, is your boy NiT GriT. I may be his younger looking doppelgänger, but that doesn’t change the fact that I’d consider my career a success if I modeled it after Danny’s lead and created music that inspires people the same way his music inspired me, regardless of genre. So hats off to you, Danny, and thanks again for another epic set that I wont soon forget.

Oh, and Two Fresh was nasty with their live drummer, and it was the perfect choice for a NiT GriT tour opener.

-Jordan Goff