It takes hard work to party

Allow me to alleviate any and all suspense you may have about Red Bull’s Thre3style U DJ battle by introducing Portland State student Levi Mohorich (aka DJ Leviathan) as the winner of a much-deserved $1,000 prize.

This would be the end of my article, if that were what the Portland-based disc jockey and PSU senior was solely after. But Mohorich calmly took time out of his last day of preparation before this past weekend’s competition to reflect on his past and ideas beyond the competition.

But make no mistake: He was already confident he’d win.

“I’ll have her text you after I win,” Mohorich said before the competition, motioning toward Andrea Ikata, fellow PSU student and the Red Bull representative who chose him to represent the school.

Ikata reminded him that it was a friendly competition between schools.

“They say it’s friendly competition,” Mohorich said, “but I want to smoke everyone.”

The confidence never appeared to be arrogance, though, and Mohorich presents his many skills with the likability of a marketing major who’s confident that you’ll buy into what he’s selling but who’s also aware of his competition.

“I just think it’s a privilege, you know, to be invited to what’s been turned into a pretty [prestigous] DJ battle,” Mohorich said.

Red Bull Thre3style U, which is held in Corvallis, is billed as “a DJ competition to uncover the best party rocking DJ on campus,” and Ikata gave more background about what winning the event means.

“The winner goes home with $1,000, and then they basically have the bragging rights [as] the best DJ on your college campus, which is between Oregon State, University of Oregon and PSU,” said Ikata, who picked Leviathan after an exhaustive search.

“I just scoured through my personal networks of DJs that I knew on campus that I thought would be good candidates,” Ikata said. “What DJ would probably give their best, their all, and represent PSU really well?”

Leviathan DJed at FX Night Club when it was still running and already had a relationship with Red Bull’s DJing presence in Portland.

“Like, 5 years ago, I got invited to open up at Aura [for Red Bull Flight Club],” Mohorich said.

Only 17 at the time, Leviathan preceded the show of world-famous DJs from premier party destinations like New York and Rio, thanks to connections established early in high school. But his ascent in Portland’s DJ scene started even further back, in a place you wouldn’t expect someone to find a lifelong calling.

“There was this ongoing thing called the Hoop Dances, in Beaverton, for middle schools. It was the cool thing to do when you were in middle school. So, I used to go to these all throughout middle school for years—before that even, in fifth grade,” Mohorich said. “When I was a sophomore, I didn’t go anymore, but I went back and talked to the owner. I said, ‘Look, I’m 15 now, I need a job.’”

By happy coincidence, the owner was looking to start a high school version of the dances and placed him on the promo team. Along with marketing and setting up lights and sound, Mohorich worked dutifully at learning how to DJ at the middle and high school dances.

“You know, I started with this little piece of crap thing, and I used CDs—had no clue what I was doing,” Mohorich said, going on to shed light on the source of his early difficulties.

“It was kind of all self-taught, like my boss taught me how to push buttons, but he was not a good DJ at all. He was like, ‘Press play, turn one volume up and the other volume down.’ And that’s what I did for years, until I started beat-matching,” he said.

Since this is an extremely difficult technique, Leviathan worked to master his track transitions and eventually bought full turntables when he was 19. What’s more impressive is that Leviathan is also a professional break-dancer and DJing isn’t even his main interest, though he applies his philosophies to each.

“Whenever there’s a battle, or any form of competition, I can relate it to break-dance, because I’m a very competitive person and it’s a very competitive dance. When I have a battle, part of going out and competing is not so much winning, but not looking bad,” Mohorich said, using a notably questionable loss by his dance crew as an example.

“We lost, but everyone was still talking about us.”

Mohorich doesn’t want to be the winner that no one likes—in a competition to create a party, should it even be considered winning if no one wants you to at their party?

DJing has an interesting dynamic of competitiveness mixed with the entertainment, and DJs straddle the line between technical skill and audience enjoyment.

While many forms of entertainment are judged this way, DJs have an obligation to stoke the party atmosphere, and an ever-present sense of audience awareness is key to winning over crowds and judges.

“I focus my set a lot on crowd reaction because that’s how you get people to like you, get them on your side,” Mohorich said. “A judge will recognize that [the DJ] really rocked the crowd well and his whole set flowed.”

On Saturday, Leviathan’s set did just that, giving him bragging rights throughout Oregon campuses as a premier party-starter; it’s a title that is going to the right person, a DJ who is well on his way to mastering the art of partying.