Set by EDM/hip-hop DJ to be a New Year’s highlight
Deadmaus has the giant mouse head, Marshmello wears a marshmallow mask that obscures his face, and Ambler/Blue Bell’s DJ Dosk blows CO2 fog onto the dance floor with a device called a club cannon.
“People love it because it’s really weird,” said the rising talent, whose real name is Dylan Doskicz. “Especially in electronic (music) circles, it’s very gimmicky.”
Unimpressed by the DJ at his first party as a student at Penn State, the Wissahickon High School grad decided to try his hand at DJ-ing. The international business and supply chain major became an entertainer on PSU’s party scene, but it was a semester in Italy during his junior year that made him say: “Damn, I wanna do this for real.”
Getting opportunities to play clubs in Rome — on one occasion drawing hundreds of students to a club on a night when it’s normally closed — “I started getting real money out of it,” he said. “Getting back from abroad, that’s when I got really into it, and came up with a logo.”
Now a DJ on the Philly scene, that occasionally also sets the energy for crowds of dancing revelers in New York, Florence, Barcelona and Prague, Doskicz doesn’t merely remix existing IF YOU GO
What: New Year’s Eve celebration featuring DJ Dosk.
When: 9 p.m. to 2 a.m. Dec. 31-Jan. 1.
Where: Sona Pub & Kitchen, 4417 Main St., Manayunk.
Tickets: $110 (includes open bar, and a buffet available from 9 to 11).
Info.: (484) 273-0481, sonapub.com/nye-2019-so-na. songs. He produces and collaborates on singles by hip-hop and EDM performers like KJ, Sarah Kane and Philly rapper Edd Chronic.
The video for the DJ Dosk song with Edd Chronic, “Static Shock,” has a video that was shot one winter in the parking lot of the William Penn Inn in Lower Gwynedd. According to Doskicz, the trees outside the restaurant, which were adorned with strings of lights, made it an attractive setting.
You can experience DJ Dosk for yourself New Year’s Eve at Sona in Manyunk. “New Year’s Eve, to me, is easy because everybody is down to celebrate,” he said, noting that the best DJs have a big music collection and successfully read the shifting moods of the crowd.
In the New Year Doskicz plans to return to Barcelona for some club dates in January. “My goal is like a European spring tour — Prague, Florence, Israel,” he said. More original singles are also forthcoming. One featured performer on the future releases is Rose from the Romanian girl group Cardinale, whom Doskicz says is going to be giving up music to concentrate on her studies at Drexel University.
Doskicz’s father is music producer and former Recording Academy president David Ivory, who is also Montgomery County Community College’s director of sound recording and music technology. “Growing up, my dad obviously had musicians at the house — rap, R&B, jazz and rock. I tried learning guitar. I tried learning piano. But in high school, I was more into sports. I just wanted to do something else when I went to college,” he said.
Now that he’s gravitated to the music business, did his father have any advice? “In this day and age, music is definitely business more than ever,” he said, mentioning websites, social media and electronic press kits. “You have to be 110 percent in, and not half-ass anything. You have to have the grit and have the willingness to push through.”
For more go to www.djdosk.com, @djdosk on Instagram and facebook.com/ DjDosk.