EDM prodigy Lamorn takes center stage at the Aragon Ballroom, opening for Deadmau5 with an electrifying hybrid-live performance. With a head-bumping, hair-in-the-face swag, Lamorn transitions from mixing to shredding on the guitar in the middle of his set. The 19-year-old DJ already has the crowd in the palm of his hands, but he’s just getting started. As the official protegé of his idol, Deadmau5, Lamorn is living his dream—and all it took was the confidence to take a risk and a live stream.
At the peak of the 2020 pandemic, EDM pioneer Deadmau5 took to live stream and invited fans to submit their demos for feedback. As an avid fan of Deadmau5, the then 17-year-old Lamorn had already submitted several demos to previous live streams, receiving a small amount of attention from his idol. Then Lamorn’s demo finally got through.
Photo: Theo Sanders
“…[Deadmau5] called his manager on his stream, then the next day [his manager] called me asking if I could sign,” Lamorn recounts, seated in his dressing room at the Aragon Ballroom, “It was life-changing.” And life-changing it was; that simple phone call would soon uproot Lamorn’s entire adolescent life.
Before his discovery, Lamorn was just an average 17-year-old, college-bound and planning to major in software engineering. However, he had an alter-ego, “Lamorn.” Lamorn had been producing and publishing his own music, under this pseudonym, since the age of 13. Initially, it was nothing serious, just an outlet for expressing his musical creativity. The budding artist had no unique sound, just a collection of demos that paid homage to his favorite DJs—especially one DJ in particular:
“I’ve had phases of just ripping off Deadmau5,” Lamorn admits, recounting experimentation with electronic music. Lamorn had idolized Deadmau5 ever since the release of “Faxing Berlin” in 2006. The release of this track, and the accompanying album, had been incredibly risky; it was Deadmau5’s first independent release, produced entirely on his own. But it had paid off, and unwittingly, Deadmau5 had kickstarted the origin story of his future protegé.
When the world went into lockdown in 2020, Lamorn took a similar plunge. He began producing music that combined all of his experimental phases and even incorporated his gift for shredding on the guitar. Lamorn had successfully defined a unique sound, and so he took a risk: he sent his demo to his idol.
Now, just two years later, Lamorn comes off of an incredible set at the Aragon Ballroom: complete with live singing, guitar shredding, and simultaneous mixing. Through the door of his dressing room, a crowd of formerly emo millennials—turned marketing consultants—buzz around the stage, awaiting the arrival of their techno mouse god, Deadmau5.
Photo: Theo Sanders
Despite opening for his idol and successfully hyping up the crowd, Lamorn is neither braggadocious nor vain. The pinnacle of relaxation, he graciously recounts his story and discusses his plans for the future.“I figure I can always go back to school,” Lamorn shrugs, “but I felt like this experience was a little more rare to come across.” As the official protegé of Deadmau5, it seems Lamorn may not need a degree after all. If all goes to plan, and the artist continues to deliver remarkable hybrid-live performances, it will not be long before Lamorn has to find a protegé of his own.