On the 23rd episode of Digital Trends Live, host Greg Nibler had a very special guest, who appeared in a unique format. Musician Zach Heiligman, better known as Reazon, called in to talk about his new, collaborative music project, DAE, which just put out a music video for the song Where We’re Going, animated using the digital audio workstation Pro Tools. To demonstrate his animation skills (and mask his sleepless appearance) Reazon rendered himself as an animated character in Pro Tools for the interview. Reazon talked about the philosophy behind DAE, the painstaking (and long) process of making the Where We’re Going video, and more.

Reazon has been an MC and DJ for years — he has, among other things, worked with the band Foster the People — and his latest project is DAE, which he describes as a collaborative, open-ended project, saying “I have a batch of songs with an incredibly talented singer-songwriter named Lwam, who’s a dear friend of mine, and we’re working on putting that together. And it’s also kind of an evolving cast.”

“DAE stands for Disguised As Earthlings,” Reazon explains. “I’m curating a vibe of people that I think are super talented aliens, kind of out-of-this-world creativity and songwriters and singers and stuff, and collaborating with them, and it will be a rotating cast of characters as the project evolves over time.”

Where We’re Going is a gorgeous video, made using a surprising source: The audio interface Pro Tools.

“I spent so much time sitting in front of Pro Tools,” Reazon says, “and one day I guess I just started dinking around and making art in there and created that castle scene that is in the video first … and I thought ‘This could be a music video.’ So Lwam and I got together, she helped with some of the art, and we basically put together this video.”

The process was not an easy one.

“It took way longer than I thought, I knew it was going to be intense, but from concept to release it was four years, on and off again going through the troubleshooting and struggles of putting it together … It was rewarding to see it come together every step of the way, you know?”

For more info about DAE, check out the group’s website.

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