Phoenix EDM producer/DJ Ekonovah sounds genuinely giddy when talking about his first-ever performance at this weekend.
He’s no stranger to Tucson stages; he’s played a few shows at n’s and in the UA area’s Main Gate, and he’s performed at downtown’s . But Tucson’s biggest EDM stage, the two-day Dusk Music Festival, has so far eluded him.
He hasn’t even had the pleasure of attending, he said during an interview last month.
“I’ve always heard really good things about the festival,†said the artist, whose real name is Stephen Scotty. “I’m genuinely so excited to finally see it, and I’ve been hearing about it for years. So when I got the news for this, I was really, really thrilled.â€
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Phoenix-based EDM producer/DJ Ekonovah is making his Dusk Music Festival debut this weekend.Â
— echo nova, as in new sound — plans to introduce himself to the thousands of EDM fans attending with his multigenre style EDM.
“I’ve been expanding my sound as an artist and trying out different drum grooves and different sounds and different ideas, all still baked into the same sort of ethos that I use when I write music,†said the 28-year-old Scottsdale native. “I’m exploring different genres and different tempos. Last weekend, I played a show at Rawhide in Chandler and it was kind of the first time I played these new songs and these new genres on a big stage.â€
Ekonovah said he received “the biggest, best reaction I could have ever hoped for†that affirmed he was on the right track.
“I’m really excited to branch out into that direction and add that into what I’m already doing,†he said.
Fans pressed up against the guardrails at the 2024 Dusk Music Festival, hoping to get closer to the artists on stage. Thousands attend the annual EDM/pop and hip-hop concert downtown every year.Â
Ekonovah has been performing music since he was around 2 years old, and his parents put him in keyboard lessons. He took piano through middle school when he started writing his own music and started one garage band after another.
But he quickly found that his friends/bandmates didn’t share his commitment to making music.
From that frustration, he discovered music production.
“I could control all the elements and all the instruments just from a computer,†he said. “And then around that time as well is when I discovered EDM so everything sort of happened at once. I went from playing piano and a couple of bands that I had started into writing music on my computer, and it was just way more energizing and electric, and it just really scratched the itch that I was looking for.â€
Ekonovah’s first dive into EDM was inspired by dubstep and house music. But he ended up focusing mostly on house.
“Over the years, I just found myself sort of trapping my own mind in the house music bubble, and only recently, with this wave of UK-based dubstep that’s been on a rise, I’ve realized how much I love dubstep, and I’ve been incorporating that into my sound again,†he explained.
He’s also been flirting with hybridizing different genres into house music, from indie rock to a more melodic “airy, flutie harmonica ... digital synthesizer kind of weird sound.â€
“I just am attracted to like strange nuance in sounds,†he said. “So I like to include that in pretty much every song. I’m always driven by trying to reinvent the wheel pretty much every time I sit in front of my computer to make something new.â€
Ekonovah said EDM fans are up for the ride he plans to take them on when he takes the stage on day two of Dusk on Sunday, Nov. 16, at Jácome Plaza, 1101 N. Stone Ave.
“I really think that the general EDM fan is open minded with different genres,†he said. “Once I told myself I don’t have to keep myself in a box, it just really felt like opening Pandora’s box in the best way.â€
Ekonovah performs mostly around that state. Last February, he played shows in London and Italy.
The top stories from the ÃÛÌÒÓ°ÏñAV’s Caliente section for this week.

