Our Shared Existence: 4AM NYC on Work Ethic, the Perfect Nightclub, and Music as a Conduit
4AM NYC portrait by nextdimensional.
By Julia Gamolina
4AM NYC has been an integral part of the New York underground for over a decade as a DJ, booker, and event organizer. They founded the beloved party and radio show, Spiritual Mental Physical in 2017, and have held residencies at some of NYC's finest venues including Good Room, Public Records, and Le Bain.
As a DJ they provide nights of music unbound by genre, dedicated to the dance floor, and always ruled by a furious and vivid emotional spectrum. 2024 sees them releasing original productions with record label Air Texture and continuing to take care of their people through incomparable nights of music.
JG: You just recently relocated from NYC to Detroit—I'd love to hear about the transition, and what you have coming up in 2024.
4AM NYC: Yeah, New York will always have my heart. Half my family's from there; I became an artist there. But I needed space to think and grow. I saw that I wasn't going to progress with my art if I continued to circle the same drains there. In Detroit, I have a small but strong, loyal community who want to see me do well, be well, and succeed. I can eat the way I want to eat, sleep the way I want to sleep, and work the way I need to work here. It's been nothing but a blessing and was a long time coming. I'd like to move back to NYC one day, but the conditions and reasons will have to be right. 2024 for me is about making music. The end.
4AM NYC, when the veil between worlds is at its thinnest. Feb 2024, Photo by Jamie Jar.
Backtracking a bit, I'd love to hear about how your career as a DJ, producer, and host began. What drew you to this career and how did everything evolve?
I used to work in the fashion industry as a womenswear ready-to-wear designer. I was a tailor and a draper, meaning I cut patterns. I'm built to make things with my hands, to empower women and femmes, and to tell stories through those processes.
However, my work in fashion wasn't what I had hoped it would be, and after about 5 years of trying a lot of different things, I decided, with a very heavy heart, to leave that line of work. I became a barista to make some quick and easy money, and started throwing parties out of the coffee shop I worked at in Crown Heights. Through organizing events, I met some DJs—vinyl-only DJs, specifically. The click was instant for me—I needed to know everything about what they did, I wanted to touch all of the records, learn their stories, go wherever they came from, and explore the entire art form for myself. That led me to discover the thriving underground music communities in NYC and Brooklyn where I got to know myself better as a dancer and, later on, as a DJ in my own right.
Looking back at it all, what have been the biggest challenges? How did you both manage through perceived disappointments or setbacks?
The biggest challenges were men. Always men, and at every stage and every level. Gatekeeping, belittling, gaslighting, dismissing, excluding, harassing, intentionally blocking me from work, and sometimes physically abusing me in clubs where I worked and played.
So much progress has been made in the last thirteen years since I started as a DJ. I am genuinely happy for the femmes who can now move about a bit easier these days, but also to be perfectly honest, it sometimes makes me sad and grieve for my younger self—I wish it had been easier for me too because then I think I could have retained more of the pure wonder and joy for it all. You become hardened and experience a deep steeling of the self in male-dominated industries, especially in NYC.
My way of coping was to just always work harder. That's all I knew how to do. It wasn't the happiest way . . . it was tough. But my work ethic now is one of the parts of me that I celebrate and am the most grateful for.
“My way of coping was to just always work harder. That’s all I knew how to do. It wasn’t the happiest way . . . it was tough. But my work ethic now is one of the parts of me I celebrate and am the most grateful for.”
What have you also learned in the last six months?
That I am at the top of my game right now and there's nothing I cannot achieve if I stay consistent and focused. That health is everything and it must come first. That I don't need a lot to be happy. That I don't need a partner or permission to do what I want in life or work. That I really do have people in my corner these days. I am happy with my work as a booker too. I work with strong people and a strong team at Gabriela in Williamsburg, Brooklyn, and I feel supported and respected at work. In nightlife?! Can you imagine!? A dream come true.
What are you most excited about right now?
Traveling to different places in the world to spin. Getting to know myself better as a producer and giving that craft time and space to develop without pressure. I'm at the beginning of my 10,000 hours and it's humbling and frightening. Sometimes I think, "Am I too late? Am I good enough? What's the point anyway?" I’ve learned to ignore those voices, push through, and create anyway.
In the middle of the night. 4AM NYC Feb 2024. Photo by Jamie Jar.
Who are you admiring now and why?
I'm listening to a lot of podcasts these days since I drive a lot in Detroit. I've gained so much peace and insight from interviews with Tracee Ellis Ross, Keanu Reeves, Michael Stipe, and Depeche Mode, to name a few. The generation they come from is one that I grew up looking to for answers and inspiration. It's amazing to witness these artists grow and develop from strength to strength—adapting to our changing world and how it affects each of their art forms and connected industries. I admire people who keep going despite all odds, and do whatever they can to make themselves happy. To find their own voices, styles, true feelings, and opinions, and who, in turn, enrich other people's lives immeasurably through their experience and art.
I also saw Madonna live at Madison Square Garden in January, and that was one of the greatest nights of my life. She is everything to me. She was the blueprint for so many of us. We can now run because she crawled through it all to begin with.
“In my waking life, I am pretty obsessed with what the perfect nightclub should look, feel, and sound like. Architecture is so important when it comes to making humans feel safe, held, and cared for.”
Since so much of our readership are architects, what do you think of when you think of architecture? How do you engage with architecture in your work?
Architecture dominates my dreams actually! Maybe I was supposed to be an architect or was one in a past life. Every night I move through warehouses, cathedrals, bridges, landscapes full of ruins, dense cities, perfect nightclubs, fantasy gardens, bizarre Escher-style re-workings of old homes I have lived in, my own ultimate sky-high apartments, amazing furniture, personal décor, underground pools. They are all so vivid and consistent!
In my waking life, I am pretty obsessed with what the perfect nightclub should look, feel, and sound like. Architecture is so important when it comes to making humans feel safe, held, and cared for. When you give them that foundation, they are then free to express themselves, enjoy the environment they're in fully, and connect with other people around them too. Plus, no one can hear you as a DJ or appreciate the musical element of a nightlife experience if they are not comfortable and safe first.
I think that Smartbar in Chicago and Gabriela in Brooklyn, NY, come pretty close to what a perfect nightclub should be like. Both are very different, but they share the same basic elements: a flawless sound system, a spacious and comfortable DJ booth, dynamic club lighting, comfortable seating throughout, a welcoming and intimate dancefloor, two bars so that you can always get service, bathrooms located well-away from the dancefloor, low and atmospheric lighting throughout the venue, color palettes that reinforce the signature “world” of each club—and at Smartbar they have a fabulous mirrored hall before you enter the actual bathrooms so you can have a little “moment” and check yourself out before you go back out into the crowd. Mirrors in a club are crucial—I love mirrored anything and everything.
What is the impact that you’d like to have on the world? What is your core mission? And what does success in that look like to you?
I will endeavor to create timeless music that expresses our shared existence to the best of my abilities, in the hope that it will serve as a conduit for people to feel themselves fully and deeply. Your own experience is all you have—why not heighten it to the very limits?
My core mission in anything and everything I do is to work towards a world where we are all truly equal. Where everyone has enough and is enough. I don't fear death because I truly believe that we are already living in hell. It can only get better from here. In this vein, success to me is consistently making and releasing music I am happy with, and finding and experiencing true love in this lifetime.
Uncompromising, Passionate, Sincere. 4AM NYC, Feb 2024. Photo by Jamie Jar.
Finally, what advice do you have for those starting their career? Would your advice be any different for women?
Don't go to college. Start working in the field that you are interested in immediately. Intern, work for free if you have to—do whatever it takes to be close to what you want. Everything you want to do in life is about experience and connections . . . and also money, but let's focus on the aforementioned here. You can learn most things on the fly or with the help of the internet or intensive short courses—don't go into crippling debt through an archaic education system that does not prepare you for real life, or expose you to the people, places, and things that would bring you closer to where you want to be. Don't worry about doing anything perfectly—just get out there and do the thing that you want to do. And trust your gut—if it doesn’t feel right, or safe, or respectful, it isn't.