JK (aka Justin Kan—entrepreneur, Twitch co-founder, and label co-founder) says that he built Titanic's End Records with Orso ("Move," with 500M+ streams), Arabic Piano (South African producer with a signature piano sound), and three-time GRAMMY-nominated artist Maejor (credits include Justin Bieber, Martin Garrix), in a 10-month sprint in 2022.
"During that time, we were spending so much energy and effort on building a massive, mobile sound car that I thought I might as well learn to DJ on it," JK says. "One of my friends working on the car with me, Skye (who DJ'd as GlittrCat), taught me how to DJ in my kitchen. When we brought Titanic's End to Burning Man that year, we had a DJ no-show during sunrise on Saturday, and I hopped on the decks with Skye for a B2B. I had the most fun I'd had in years, and a couple weeks later I was at a nightclub in LA when someone I didn't know who had been to the burn that year mentioned that Titanic's End was their favorite new car, and whoever DJ'ed that Saturday sunrise was amazing. That gave me the encouragement to keep going. Pretty soon after I linked up with Stryv, who started teaching me some production, and we decided to form an artist project called Orso together. We've been working on music together since then."
JK describes the sound as, "Afro-inspired house music uplifts, letting the listener float away into higher states of consciousness."
The latest release is the "In Your Eyes" track.
"'In Your Eyes' is a collaboration with Arabic Piano, who is one of my favorite producers out there, and Maejor, a friend of mine who is not only a divine singer and songwriter but one of the most joyful and grounded people I've met," JK says. "We wanted to make a track that was hard enough for the club but a vibe you could play in every day life."
As for gear: "DJ setup is pretty standard: V10 or A9 with CDJs. I use Audio Technica ATH-M50x headphones for DJing most of the time but I also have a pair of in-ear monitors from 1 of 1 Custom. For production, Ableton on my MacBook — pretty simple."
Looking ahead, JK has plenty planned for 2025.
"We're doing more and more live events with the full art car to showcase the talent coming out of our Titanic's End community," he says. "The car is the labor of love of a community of over 200 artists, engineers and creatives, and it is really incredible and fulfilling to see people enjoying our work out in the world. We've also got more music coming soon; I'm sitting on a bunch of tracks we've made with Maejor that sound amazing."
Photo by Skye Arun
