Meet Ansolo, Actor Ansel Elgort’s DJ Alter-Ego

How have you balanced building this career separately from your acting career? How do you hope to continue balancing it with the major-label deal?
It’s sort of my obsession. When you’re obsessed with something and love to do it, it’s not hard to find time to do it. I came to EZoo yesterday and left early after Don Diablo. I went home and just worked on music for today. I love to do it, and it wasn’t because, “Oh, I need to get something together!” It’s what I love to do. My favorite thing to do is just to sit and work on music on my computer. If I’m shooting a movie, there’s so much downtime on set. If I’m in a different state or country with people I don’t really know that well and everyone is tired from working, I go home and make music. For my studio, I brought monitors in there, plus an interface, a laptop. The turnarounds [on set] can take an hour, hour and a half, so what are you gonna do? Sit and do nothing, or actually do what I want to be doing, which is making music? 

The fact that I don’t have a 9-to-5 job actually makes my life easier. I mean, even if I did, I guess I’d do [music] after work. Acting can be a 12-to-12 job, but it can also mean you have nothing to do for an entire month. So for that month, I’m making music. 

You have mentioned a lot of names before, but who are your heroes? Who has inspired you as a DJ and producer?
I love the Swedes. Those guys are really, really epic. What they’ve done is come from a place where everyone in the industry respects them so much as the tastemakers. They’re making the coolest music. Then, they go and make a pop version of it, and they’re all the biggest record in pop music, which is Swedish House Mafia.

Then there’s Daft Punk who are doing different music every album, but every time they re-create their sound, it’s special and people always gravitate to it. It’s never not credible. Everyone thinks Daft Punk are the coolest. The idea of being cool and credible but also commercial is really cool to me. It’s a really tough balance to find.