An Interview with Young and Rising DJ Moore Kismet

Moore Kismet (they/them), exudes contagious, positive queer energy that deserves everyone’s attention! With an explosive and colorful stage presence, insane talent for music, visual design, filmmaking, and animation. If you get the chance to see them live, you won’t regret it!

Who is Moore Kismet, and how did you get your stage name?

I’m a 19 year old DJ, music producer and visual artist from Los Angeles. I’ve been making music for 12 years now, and hacve been doing Moore Kismet for about six to seven-ish years now. My mom actually came up with my stage name. It was kind of her way of expressing that me being a part of her life and me coming into her life was fate. It was destiny because the word Kismet means fate, destiny, and luck in Hindu. I learned some of that from a lot of Indian fans of mine, and that was a really beautiful revelation that really helped us connect more with the name that we picked and why it’s so important for us to keep it. 

For me, I’ve kind of always viewed it as a physical manifestation of me. Wishing for more to happen with my destiny and fate for a more positive good to come from it. So ultimately, that’s just kind of what it symbolizes to me. It’s kind of looking for more with my fate and looking for more with my destiny.

When you started making music, who were some of your biggest influences?

Around me, my mom used to be in a girl group, and my dad used to be a music composer for CBS My cousin also is a classically trained singer so, I came up in a very artistically and musically inclined family. Even if we can’t sing a note right, we’re always singing, dancing, and finding ways to spend time more time with each other. 

When I got into actually producing music, key inspirations for me were, Audien, Skrillex, Above and Beyond, Calvin Harris, Boombox Cartel, and Rickyxsan. Just a lot of different artists from a lot of different spectrums. But now my tastes have kind of evolved more to different spectrums of artists becoming inspired by artists like Sophie and still to this day Rickyxsan. I’m also very inspired by artists like ISOxo and Knock2, and a lot of incredibly talented r&b producers such as Johnny Wood, High Klassified, and D’mile. It incorporates those more soulful and musical elements into my work and making it more experimental, but still finding a heart and a soul to the record at the end of the day.

How does being non-binary translate into music in your visual production?

I think for me, it very much so correlates to what I create, because of the fact that my identity is inescapable. For me it is a part of everything that I do. And it’s not to say that I’m using it as a personality trait, or I’m using it for clout or anything because people have, unfortunately, accused me of shit like that before. But it’s really just more so it’s just how I identify, and these are the experiences that I encounter as a result of living my truth. And so why not take the pain and you know, the emotion that I experience in navigating that and just find a way to make a positive out of it. 

So ultimately, that’s what I wanted to do was to just kind of, you know, use my identity as a way to tell the stories from my life and from my own perspective, to just show people other people that are like me that they’re not alone in their experiences. You know, coming to terms with their identity, discovering who they truly are, and being able to live fully and as authentically as they can possibly live.

In a few words describe your stage presence.

Unadulterated energy mixed with gayness! I feel that’s the only way I can really explain it. But yeah, it comes from me being me and the communities that I’ve grown up with. So that’s just what I resonate with the most but I’m just a ball of energy that music just hits me in a different way and I just get so into it!

As a young artist yourself, what advice would you give to other young aspiring LGBTQ+ artists?

You do not have to change yourself or any part of you, or anything about you to make people more comfortable with you! I think that’s the one thing that I wish somebody told me when I was younger when I was first starting out. Having to navigate so many people blocking me because I’m trans. Muting me because I’m trans. Talking shit about my music that I put so much time, love and hard work into because I’m trans. That’s the only identifying factor for them. It’s like, oh, this person is transgender. They’re mentally ill. I’m not supporting them. That’s the mentality they ride with. But there is going to be a group of people who see you and see what you’re trying to do and are going to fully accept you. No matter what changes you, your sonic palette, or your career direction. I’m so fortunate that I’m starting to really find that group of people now because, you know, in a very straight male dominated industry. You know, there were very few people like me actually kind of showing other queer kids and showing other people other marginalized communities this is a real thing that you could do and that this was a real possibility and dream that you can achieve if you put your mind to it. Just try your absolute hardest to not let the negativity damper what you do, and yeah, it’s gonna hurt, it will never not hurt, but it that doesn’t mean you should let it stop you from doing what you love.

Now that See Every Color Vol 2 is out. Who were you most excited to have collaborate on it? 

Flux Pavilion and Chime! There’s no other answer to that. I’m so grateful to all the incredible people that I got to collaborate with, and include on the mix. There are also so many more people that I’m working with behind the scenes that are truly amazing, but the Flux Pavilion and Chime collab came about in the most random of ways. It’s largely my fault because my memory is dogshit so I did not remember sending the same work in progress to two different people. As a result, they were just like, hey, rather than making this whole big thing, why don’t we just work on it together as a three way collaboration and it’s literally something you pull out of a lucid dream. And, you know, I’m just so grateful especially because Chime and Flux also both recently came out as non binary as well so it’s just to see these two major icons and melodic bass music kind of just start to live their truth as queer people. It just makes me so happy to be working with such incredible people, and I’m just really honored to have that track with them, and to finish it up. But yeah, that’s definitely the one that I’m most excited about.

With your debut album UNIVERSE released back in 2022, are we gonna get a second album soon?

Okay, I do not think anybody would ask me about this this early. I will say this. I have maybe two albums worth of demos of stuff that really doesn’t sound much like what people would think. It’s some of the best music I’ve ever written in my lifel, and I just hope that at the point of which I’m ready to start finalizing and sharing that music, that everybody will be excited for it. Because I truly am excited for everybody to hear the direction that I’m taking my sound.

What are your 2024 ins and outs?

Ins, not shaming people for who they want to be. Not putting labels on what you create. Being okay with talking publicly about anything you might be going through. Good sound for every person performing, not just for the headlining act and maybe the direct support, good sound, and production for everybody. And then just you know, rent dropping, we need that rent to drop everywhere, but specifically Los Angeles haha.

Outs, again to reiterate not shaming people for who they are. I would say high rent costs for out because no no, no no. I would also say merch cuts at venues and predatory label releases. 

I feel there are so many circumstances where artists are being taken advantage of by record labels who are more so interested in making money off of an artist or making money in general as opposed to actually supporting an artist’s vision and really uplifting them and, you know, just really putting emphasis behind it. And as such, that’s why you see so many incredible artists making incredible music, and then they release it on a record label that has no idea what the fuck they’re doing and it ends up flopping. So I’m just like no artist deserves to go through that, and no person who wants to run a record label for the sake of supporting and uplifting artists and helping grow a platform for those artists should be putting them in that position. I just really think that that’s definitely an out, and I feel like independent releases teach artists a lot more about promoting their work and pushing it to the best possible extent it can be pushed, doing content creation, everything. As much as that may suck in the grand scheme of things, it is something that for a lot of artists nowadays it is a very necessary thing to learn. If we have a specific creative vision and like we all for the most part, I would say the vast majority of us saw the Renaissance film. Y’all saw how Beyonce had her hands on everything. That’s how I’m trying to be! I want to make sure that my creative vision is unwavering in everything. Like you are able to tell from the moment you walk in, to the moment that you walk out of the show. That it is me. From the moment that you start listening to the track or an album, to the moment you finish listening to a track or an album, that it’s me! That is the kind of artist that I want to be, and for the most part I would say, I think that’s the kind of artist that I know a lot of people want to be because they love doing this. They love creating music, and they want to share their music with everybody. I think you know, it’s a steady climb for all of us, but we have to put in the work and really just make sure that our passion and our love for music is there at the forefront of everything. Because if that’s not there, then there’s no reason why we should be doing this to begin with.

Having played at some of the biggest festivals such as EDC Las Vegas, EZoo, Bonnaroo, Lost Lands and more. What lineups are you hoping to see yourself this year? 

Oh my god. I would have loved to be on Bonnaroo again. I would love to do ACL at some point. I really want to do Okeechobee Beyond Wonderland in SoCal because I’ve only done the one in Seattle. I also want to be on the main lineup at Coachella someday and there are so many more that are just not coming to me.

What are some personal goals outside of music you’re hoping to accomplish this year?

I want to get my animated series concept that I’ve been working on for the last six years with my best friend’s greenlit at Adult Swim. I want to work on my first short film, and I want to start writing my second feature film. I want to direct a music video, like a full blown music video. A boyfriend haha, and I don’t know. I just want to be happier in general, this last year has been very tumultuous for me, and I just want to be in a position where I’m just consistently genuinely happy and content with life. Even if things are or I am in a rough spot still, I’ll have more security and more faith in the fact that I’ll be able to make it through. 

Do you have any final words or mention anything that we haven’t discussed?

So for the last year and a half, I’ve been working on a very special project that I’m very excited to share with everybody. We’ve been working, whittling away all the details and everything, and we’re finally getting to a point where we’re going to be able to share everything with everyone soon. So I’m very excited to finally give it away and show everybody what I’ve been working on, and I’m also very excited to be returning to Denver very soon for something very special that I can’t talk about in full yet. 

Photos by Brandon (@dnz.media)