Young dance music star Justin Blau (aka 3lau) has come quite a way since his mashups days in college. With a background in guitar, piano, and drums, 3lau has seamlessly meshed pop, dance music, and hip hop tracks into epic dance tracks. After achieving the #1 ranked remix in Tiesto’s “Work Hard, Play Hard” competition, 3lau continued to shine and has collaborated with producers such as Cosmic Gate, Dash Berlin, and Gareth Emery. Now, 3LAU is focused on moving from bootlegs and mashups to original tracks. After 8 million listens on SoundCloud for his first original track “How You Love Me” in 2014, 3lau introduced us to “Alive Again” earlier this summer. Showcasing his versatility in his latest EP “Alive Again,” 3lau masters each version of the track with different sound production techniques to engage any listener. We caught up with 3lau after his set a few weeks ago at Moonrise Festival to get the inside scoop on how it all began and what the future holds.

SR: How did you balance being in college while DJing at night?

3lau: It was really hard. It’s funny, Nick, my tour manager, actually booked me for my first show for $100. I DJed for the soccer team formal…or something like that. But balancing both was difficult. There definitely was a point in time where I had to make a sacrifice in my school work to pursue my career. I had to make more school sacrifices and more academic sacrifices. Eventually I had to make a decision. It was actually my professor who convinced my parents to let me take a leave of absence from school to pursue music full time.

SR: The school let you take a leave of absence?

3lau: The school did and I kept my full scholarship and everything. Technically, I could still go back within another two years and finish.

SR: What were you majoring in?

3lau: I was a finance major and an English major. So definitely the opposite ends of the spectrum.

SR: Do you think you would continue with finance if you weren’t an artist?

3lau: Yeah, I would be in Wall Street, New York.

SR: Did you enjoy doing finance?

3lau:  I love finance, don’t get me wrong. I love business and I love the entrepreneurship of business. I did love it, a lot. But honestly music was always my first love.

SR: How did you start getting your music out there?

3lau: It was all dance music blogs plus a combination of college blogs and making mashups. Back in the day when dance music wasn’t as popular, I mixed dance music that was popular in Europe with pop music that was popular in the United States. I was feeling it out. I had one mashup that hit 1 million views on YouTube really quickly and within a short period of time, sports videos were using it and it just got around. That was it and how it all really started. The blog support was huge in the beginning stages of my career. A lot of blogs hyped up what I was doing and Hype Machine helped my career. After my music started getting out there, I started playing more out of town college shows.

SR: Who are some of your biggest inspirations for your music?

3lau: Within dance music, it has changed so much over the years.

SR: What about when you first started?

3lau: When I first started, I always looked up to Porter Robinson. I felt like Porter and I were very similar, except he was younger and better. He’s killin’ it now and doing his own thing. I have so much respect for him. But I also have a lot of respect for Calvin Harris, Eric Prydz, Kaskade, Diplo, Skrillex….all those guys. I feel like everyone does their own thing and does it extremely well. I’m finally getting to that point where I feel like the music I make is truly my own and different and not just somewhat copycat of stuff that already exists now. I’m really pumped about it all!

SR: That’s always great feeling that way! Your new EP “Alive Again” has different styles.

3lau: The new EP has a trance version, this weird experimental version, and an acoustic version. Not to toot my own horn, but I don’t think anyone else in dance music has done that before. It’s really cool for fans and for listens to see that I’m not just sitting behind a computer screen. I want to show people that I can play instruments, I can play strings, and I can make and transform music in a lot of different ways for listeners. That was the main focus on the recent EP.

SR: I definitely really admire that you can play instruments and don’t just go behind a computer screen to make music. I talked to Big Gigantic earlier so they obviously know what’s up about playing instruments as well.

3lau: Nice, I love Big G. They’re really good friends of mine. Dom is from Vegas but now lives in Colorado. Their live performances just crush it. That’s where everything is moving and we’ve got some stuff coming too.

SR: Do you want to play piano live during sets? Maybe in the future?

3lau: Absolutely!

SR: That’d be really awesome!

3lau: In regards to playing guitar and piano live, we’re getting there. It takes a lot of time and it’s not the right time for it to happen. But 2016 is when we are going to start exploring the idea a lot more. It’s just tough when you’re raging and you have to transition. My goal is to do a piece in the middle of a set and then a piece at the end of a set. But we will see! I haven’t quite figured it out yet.

SR: What would you say your biggest accomplishment has been?

3lau: That’s tough. I’m extremely excited about my new music. It’s very different and I think it’s going to change my life. Let’s hope I’m right! But no one has heard it yet and I didn’t even play all of it tonight.

SR: I definitely want to hear more about the new music you plan on releasing in the future!

3lau: I’m trying to release a lot of different genres and not just stick with one thing. I make progressive stuff, you know, hard heavy stuff. Now I don’t care what people want me to do. I always wanted to cater to the crowd with what I was making, but now I’m just exploring my own style. It’s interesting because in doing that, I feel like I’m making stuff that people really like. It’s just different. Two of my unreleased tracks are groovy. I don’t wanna call them “deep house,” because they’re not. It’s such a buzz word these days on the Internet. It’s not deep, it’s just groovy. I don’t think DJs would play these songs. They’re not playable in a DJ set, they’re just songs. That’s what I’m really excited about. That’s what Porter did with his album, he just made songs.

SR: Exactly. People love what he did with the new album.

3lau: DJs don’t really play anything from his new album, but it doesn’t matter because they’re songs. That’s where I feel like the industry is moving. EDM started as this trend, this mystery that works in a live setting.  The challenge for us now is creating music that works in a live setting but is also listenable on a regular basis. Obviously people listen to dance music all the time using their headphones, but it’s not the same experience as listening to it live because of the sound system. You can’t really hear the full potential of what dance music has to offer unless you’re hearing it live. With other types of music in your headphones, you get everything out of it. I think that’s where the whole dance phase is moving. It’s moving more in that direction and creating that hybrid of what works live, what works in your headphones, and what really moves you emotionally in a private setting.