From a high school raver to Sydney mainstages, Steven Nguyen is bringing a unique blend of hard dance, anime influence, and relentless energy to the decks.
Steven Nguyen, better known as IKIGAI, is a Vietnamese Born Australian who has been behind the decks since 2009. Originally starting out as DJ Steve, he officially rebranded to IKIGAI in 2019. Having started raving back in high school, he got involved with F.O.R.C.E Entertainment as a trainee at The DJ Factory, keeping him heavily involved in the local underground rave scene from the very beginning.
When asked to describe the sonic vibe of his sets, he paints a highly specific picture: “Somewhere between a Tokyo midnight street race and the mainstage at Defqon.1”.
We sat down with IKIGAI to discuss the meaning behind his name, his heavy anime influences, and his brand new Hard Dance remix.
🌸 The Reason For Being
The name IKIGAI translates to “The Reason For Being”. For Steven, that reason is music and DJing, a passion he has held for a long time.
That passion is heavily influenced by non-musical elements like Anime and Video Games, which he says have a huge influence on his sound. This influence is bleeding directly into his current studio work, where he is focusing on producing an entire EP of anime remixes alongside Overdrive. In fact, seeing the core fundamentals of their Cruel Angel Thesis remix come to life in Overdrive’s studio in just one afternoon was the most intense crash course into producing that permanently changed his approach.
Taking a page right out of his favorite media, his life mantra comes from One Piece‘s Monkey D. Luffy: “If you don’t take risks, you can’t create a future!”.
🛑 Community Over Gatekeeping
IKIGAI has seen the scene evolve massively over the years… shifting his own sets from older EDM tracks like Krewella’s Alive to his current hard dance identity.
With that perspective comes a clear vision of what the current industry needs. While he is absolutely loving the dancing trends right now (specifically muzzing and hakking) he has zero time for industry politics. “Would love the gatekeeping/politics trend to disappear, everyone should be working together to bring the scene up!” he notes.
His ultimate advice for newcomers trying to break through that gatekeeping? “Networking is number 1! Go to events, connect with DJs & Promoters”. He also stresses the importance of building a fan base, because “those will be your biggest supporters”.
🔊 Track of the Week: Ai Đưa Em Về (IKIGAI Hard Dance Remix)
Our Track of the Week is IKIGAI’s Hard Dance remix of TIA’s Ai Đưa Em Về (Low Cortisol Song).
Produced in FL Studio using an “endless collection of plugins that I barely use,” the remix was a massive challenge. “The Struggle: Getting the melody, vocals and flow working correctly as the original track is quite a slow track,” he explains.
After scraping two previous versions of the remix, everything finally clicked. “When it all came together and was vibing… that’s when I was like yep this is it!”.
⚡ IKIGAI Quickfire
| Category | Answer |
| Origin of the Name | IKIGAI – The Reason For Being. “My reason would be music and DJing”. |
| Dream B2B Partner | Porter Robinson. |
| A Track That Never Leaves Your USB | Hardbeat – Darren Styles. |
| Guilty Pleasure Song | Country Roads – Soundrush. |
| The 3AM Post-Gig Feed | Uncle Billy’s Chinese Restaurant. |
| Drink of Choice | Vodka Redbull. |
| Vibe Killer (The Ick) | “Standing at the front of the stage just on their phone not even paying attention to the DJ”. |
| Underrated Local | DJ Jennyah (@jennyah_dj). |
🔌 Pass the Aux
We ask every feature guest to answer a question left by the previous interviewee.
Incoming Question from PARDEAUX:
“Whats a small detail in your sets that most people wouldnt notice, but you think makes the biggest difference?”
IKIGAI:
“I would say how curated the set is for the event I am playing at and my mashups remixes!”
Outgoing Question for the Next DJ:
“What was the biggest mistake/accident that you’ve made?”
Listen to the remix on SoundCloud & Spotify
Follow IKIGAI: [Instagram Link]
