Connect
To Top

Meet Zachary Schwartz of LMNOP in Downtown Los Angeles

Avatar photo

Today we’d like to introduce you to Zachary Schwartz.

Zachary, please share your story with us. How did you get to where you are today?
Born and raised in Glendale, California, I grew up in a musical/artistic household. When I was growing up, my father was in a well know kids music band called Parachute Express. They were signed to Disney Records (when it was still around) in the early 90’s. This had a huge impact on be growing up and seeing my dad performing to packed audiences of kids like me. I was very lucky to have my parents support in pursuing whatever passion I had. Turns out that it happened to be music as well.

I studied Acting for the majority of my schooling (Middle School, High School and College). When I was at LACHSA (Los Angeles County High School for the Arts) I was surrounded by young Los Angeles Artists who were also pursuing their artistic dreams. I was involved in the music scene since a lot of my friends were in bands in middle school, and I loved going the Roxy or the Whisky on weekends to see my friend’s bands perform. In High School, the french wave of electronic music from Daft Punk, Justice, and Ed Banger Records really changed the way I thought about music. I got really into Electronic music and started to attend music festivals and raves when I was 15. Seeing artists like Prince, Kraftwerk, Portishead at Coachella all in one night was mind-blowing for me as a young artist. I was hooked and wanted to become a DJ myself…

I took up the name LMNOP as homage to the childlike nostalgic music I tended to gravitate to and to carry on my dad’s legacy of kids music. I also used to think that LMNOP was not part of the alphabet when I was a kid and that it was just a word that they put in the middle of the alphabet song. A lot of people I have told this to thought the same way as a kid.

I went on to study acting at Cal Arts, and quickly became the main DJ on campus. I threw a ton of pop-up parties that always got shut down, and DJ’ed at the big infamous Halloween Bash all four years that I attended university. The last year was 2012 and I helped design the concept for a giant Mayan Pyramid that was projection-mapped onto for the party. That night I played an epic 2-hour set that had all different genres of electronic music beautifully curated to visuals created by a bunch of my friends in the theater tech department. That was the moment when I knew I wanted to do this professionally. While in college, I took up a mobile DJ job and was DJing Bar Mitzvah’s and weddings for seven years to gain experience and knowledge into what people responded to musically at parties. This really helped me with music production, because I knew what was current and what people liked.

In College, I had a Dubstep group with my friend Cheyne called CYBERTOOTH. We DJed together and would make some really nasty Dubstep at the height of the genre’s popularity. We got radio play from artists like Rusko and were playing some raves in LA. That was how I learned to produce music and design crazy sounds from scratch. After that project, I began to produce a ton of Hip-hop for various artists that I knew like Yung Jake. For a while, I began to produce under the name Larry David as a joke, but people really started responding to the name and would even refer to me as Larry. I attended Low End Theory from the beginning of its conception and it really shaped me as an artist. It was the one place you could go weekly and always see different music from across the world. I even got to play last year (May 5th 2018) before they eneded it after 11 years.

After College, I struggled to work and continue to do my art. I toured managed for my father a bit in his tours of China, and after a 61 show tour I quit tour managing and really started to seriously produce music for artists. After a few years I had released two EP’s with a friends label Dome Of Doom, but I wanted to branch out to other genres. I moved into my friend Joe Scolari’s (Joseph Luca) family’s house and starting making music with a bunch of Cal Arts friends like Joe, Matt Rose, Laura Jean Anderson, Jett Kwong, FLAVIA, and more. We started a music forum called Squad Forum where people would come every other Tuesday to our house and we would play each other what we were working on. This leads me to produce Pop, Country, R&B, and alternative music. This was the moment I defined my brand and became super clear on my sound.

Now I am releasing music with the head of Low End Theory’s (Daddy Kev) Label and my favorite indie LA based Electronic Label Alpha Pup, I have a full-length album in the works and have been releasing new music every month for the last year.

Great, so let’s dig a little deeper into the story – has it been an easy path overall and if not, what were the challenges you’ve had to overcome?
My struggles in music have mainly been with communication and egos in the industry. There seems to be this idea that if you are making money that you have some kind of power, and while our society glorifies this concept, it does not translate to good music. Music is magical, and when the concept of monetary value and power gets interlaced with this ephemeral thing we call music it’s a recipe for disaster.

I’ve seen so many of my friends get famous early on in their career. That can be disconcerting as a young artist who is discovering who they are and what they want to say with their music. I’m so proud of all my friends with major success and recognize that there is a lot of luck and being at the right place at the right time that is infused with this concept of success. For me, as long as I get to keep doing what I love I am successful in my mind.

Please tell us more about your story. What do you do best? What sets you apart from the competition?
LMNOP is my artist name and brand. I’m a Music Producer and a DJ. I specialize in Hip-Hop and Electronic Music, but I would say my genre is Future Nostalgia. I blend the sounds of today with the sounds of our past.

I am a true believer in collaboration and am probably best known for collaborating with a ton of different artists. I think that is why I’m so versatile and have done so many different styles of music. I’m always open to working with people from all different walks of life.

I also have a puppet named Lil Z that plays live with me sometimes. He’s a bit of a diva, so he always shows up late to the party and only wants to play the most dirty Hip-Hop and Bass music. I let him do his thing, but it’s always challenging dealing with the ego of a puppet who thinks he is famous (he’s not!).

What moment in your career do you look back most fondly on?
Most recently, I directed and acted in my very first music video that I made for my own project. It got picked up on Funny Or Die with the title of the article being: ‘This Puppet Loses His Virginity To Awesome Dance Music And We Have Questions.” (Honestly that title in itself in a form of conceptual art)

I shared the video with everyone I knew, including Busy P, the owner of Ed Banger records and the former manager of Daft Punk. Pedro Winter is a genius, and one of my biggest heros. He responded and said he loved the video and asked me to send him some new music.

I got to go to a Grammy afterparty Justice was throwing at Max Sennett Studios in Silverlake a few weeks later. I took my best friend Jonny and low and behold Pedro was DJing. I went up to talked with him after he played, and I told him how mush Ed Banger and his music meant to me. He then said “I know you buddy, I saw your video! You are a star”.

Probably one of the greatest moments of my life!!!

Contact Info:

Image Credit:
James Law & Ellie Jameson

Suggest a story: VoyageLA is built on recommendations from the community; it’s how we uncover hidden gems, so if you or someone you know deserves recognition please let us know here.

Related Items

Leave a Reply

Your email address will not be published. Required fields are marked *

More in