NGHTMRE’s (aka Tyler Marenyi) rise to the top has been a dream to say the least. Some would say he arrived the day Skrillex made his ID the only unknown record in his 2015 Ultra set, a record that would go on to be arguably the biggest Trap song that summer. After playing his first headline gigs the week after, Tyler went on to hit almost every major festival in North America, including Lollapalooza, EDC Las Vegas, TomorrowWorld, Snow Globe, Freak Night, OMFG NYE, Moonrise, Contact Music Festival, and LifeInColor Festival. Only three months in as a touring DJ, he headlined six cities throughout Australia at legendary clubs such as Chinese Laundry and Ambar. After Australia, he went on to headline almost every major market in North America, hitting marquee venues such as Webster Hall, Avalon, The Mid, Beta, and Elektricity. He’s known for his various Mad Decent smashes, including the trap song of the summer “Street” and his collaboration with Flosstradamus entitled “Lighters Up.” His Nuclear Bonds EP with long time friends, Slander, was one of the premiere EP releases from Diplo’s imprint.
First, how’d you come up with the name NGHTMRE?
My nickname growing up was Tmare. When I started producing I just kind of adopted that name as an alias. Then when I moved to LA and finally got my music to the point where I felt it was strong enough, I decided to re-brand with a new name. Nightmare was just one of the only words with “Tmare” in it, so I just abbreviated it so the T was in the middle (because my name is Tyler) and went with it!
You have a unique sound that is distinctly nghtmre. what do you feel helped form that sound?
I grew up listening to a lot of rock and alternative music. I was a huge fan of The Red Hot Chili Peppers, The Arctic Monkeys, The Black Keys. I was always into really melodic stuff. I try and make stuff that has musical integrity, as I like to call it. I went to my first Bassnectar show right at the beginning of college. It was right as the Flux Pavilion remix of Gold Dust had just come out and all these really crazy bass-heavy tracks. I was like “Damn. This is insane.” It just made me want to create stuff like that, but it took me five or six years before I found a sound that was mine. Eventually you start to see patterns within your own production. That’s what I feel like your sound ends up being.
How did icon collective help advance your production skills?
Before I went there, I was at a point that I was happy with how my songwriting and arrangement were. But my mixing wasn’t [there]. I could play a Skrillex song and play my song in a set next to it and it didn’t sound like anything related to it. It was way quiet and the drums didn’t hit the same way. Icon teaches you everything. They teach you sound design, arrangement, live recording for vocalists. But what I mostly felt like I got out of it was the mixing and mastering of things. The right way to mix down your drums, the loudness of each element in the song and how they should mix together, which frequencies you should cut out so that other sounds can fit in a little better.
You’re all about pushing boundaries with your music. Where’s the NGHTMRE sound going next?
I don’t exactly know where I’m trying to innovate towards. There are still a lot of depths of the music world to be explored, just keeping that in mind while writing music is important. A lot of the coolest stuff I’ve come up with has been on accident. Most of the time I’ll go in with one idea and come out with something completely different. That’s how I produced “Street” – purely through experimentation. Just by going through samples you can find an infinite amount of inspiration, it’s crazy
Your production style is so eclectic, which is a very amazing quality to have in this industry. What do you believe sets you apart from other artists in terms of your music making abilities?
Umm, well I grew up playing piano and drums mostly and I listened to tons of different types of music so my music background is a little all over the place. I love all types of music so its hard to pick one style to be yours. I try to keep certain characteristics in all of my songs so that no matter what tempo or drum structure it has, you can still tell its a NGHTMRE song.
So with the energy and everybody jumping, it’s crazy to see people reacting to a lot of your originals out there too, right?
Yeah, totally. I play a lot of songs in my set. I probably play close to 60 in an hour. They reacted to everything. I feel like I try to play a really wide variety because this is actually the first time I play a main stage. A little bit of a different crowd. Obviously, you hope people are there to see you, but at one point I said, “Yo, raise your hands if this is your first NGHTMRE set,” and it felt like I heard everyone screaming.
Can you talk a little more about why sampling is so valuable?
For me, the most important element while writing music is the sound design; having interesting sounds and creating things that people haven’t heard before. That’s why I use a lot of organic sounds because it’s not something you can just generate with a synthesizer. Digitally, you’re restricted a bit which is why sampling is so awesome.
What’s the most exciting tool or plugin you are currently experimenting with?
Theres a built-in audio effect in Ableton that’s called grain delay. It’s basically a regular delay. It’s crazy. There are millions of adjustments you can tweak to make it sound cooler and change the pitch of the delay. That’s how I ended up making Street.
If you could go back and give your 20-year old self advice, what would you say?
I feel like at that point I knew I had a passion for music, but I was still telling myself I needed to focus on business and finance. I got a finance degree at Elon. I would have just been like, “spend more time on music.” Obviously business school is important. I focused more on having dope grades, but I felt deep down that music was my passion. Also, have confidence in your own music. It’s easy to hear someone else’s stuff and think it’s way cooler. You just have to own your stuff and be confident with it. That’s 50 percent of the battle. At that time I was trying to make songs that I thought DJs would play because they liked the song rather than making the song I wanted to make.
https://soundcloud.com/nghtmre/frontlines
If you could go back and give your 20-year old self advice, what would you say?
I feel like at that point I knew I had a passion for music, but I was still telling myself I needed to focus on business and finance. I got a finance degree at Elon. I would have just been like, “spend more time on music.” Obviously business school is important. I focused more on having dope grades, but I felt deep down that music was my passion. Also, have confidence in your own music. It’s easy to hear someone else’s stuff and think it’s way cooler. You just have to own your stuff and be confident with it. That’s 50 percent of the battle. At that time I was trying to make songs that I thought DJs would play because they liked the song rather than making the song I wanted to make.
What would fans be surprised to learn about you?
I’m a pretty introverted person. I had pretty severe stage freight. Giving presentations in front of a class of 10 people made me really nervous up until a couple months ago. I’m really quiet at home. My first few shows I wouldn’t really get on the mic at all, because I was really nervous I would mess up. It took talking to Derek (Slander). He was like “Everyone is at this show because they want to see a DJ and want to hear from him. No matter what you say, it’ll be good.” When I was in Australia, I got on the mic a lot more. Once I got through that, it was a whole new level of comfort onstage. It made me feel so much better. I’m definitely still an introvert. I’ve had friends come to recent shows, and they’re all like, “I’ve literally never heard you yell in your entire life. That’s the first time I’ve heard you yell.