Glow Campus lights up a new semester

Students+wear+clothing+items+that+can+easily+light+up+against+black+lights+and+glow+sticks+that+were+handed+out.

Mohammad Tazin photo

Students wear clothing items that can easily light up against black lights and glow sticks that were handed out.

During Welcome Weekend at the University of Wisconsin-Platteville, students are presented with a musical artist to put on a show to help welcome new and returning students back to campus. However, this year was a little different. UW-Platteville welcomed touring company, Glow Campus, to help start the semester off right.

Glow Campus provides a big party and light show to attendees. The visual experience includes DJs, aerialists and face painting.  The opening DJ, AG, traveled all the way from Boston. AG, whose full name is Andrew Garcia, started DJing around four years ago and started writing music two years ago.

“It’s a good time, a lot of fun. It’s cool DJing because you can literally plan any music you want and do whatever you feel, be as creative as you want,” AG said.

AG was going in a very different musical direction before he discovered his path in electronic music.

“I used to be a drummer for a heavy metal band and I never even thought about electronic music,” AG said. “Then my friend brought me to a Deadmaus concert. Mid show, I noticed that every single person in the audience was super into it. For every show I’ve ever played in a band, I never saw that happen. I had never seen so many people captivated. I was like that’s the coolest thing I’ve ever seen; I want to do that.”

This led AG to flying across the country to DJ with Glow Campus. He has done 10 shows with the company, starting last spring in 2016. AG has done local shows around Boston but the furthest he ever got on his own was down to Rhode Island and Connecticut.

At the show itself, the energy was electric. The crowd was full of people dancing and almost everyone had a glow stick in hand. At one point people were crowd surfing and doing backflips.

“I thought the show was very aesthetically pleasing,” junior criminal justice major Jordan Williams said. “The visual effects were very cool.”

The set was full of popular songs like a remix of “Humble” by Kendrick Lamar, “Stay” by Zedd featuring Alessia Cara, as well as songs remixed by Drake and Lil Jon.

When it comes to the songs he decides to play, AG has to change it up for college crowds.

“I think college crowds are very… I don’t want to say selective, but you have to play popular music. I’m really into heavier stuff like dubstep and trap, but you can’t really play that here because people will be like what is this? It’s cool to blend my kind of music with popular music. So that’s what I try to do. Colleges are fun because you can experiment a lot.”

AG also did the visuals for the whole show, which was in the background while he and the headliner GlowKids performed. He explained the whole show was designed to just keep getting better and better as time went on.

“After I get off the next DJ comes on and it’s more like a show. The lights are better, more visuals, performers come out like the aerialists and the robot, and then the last set is the big one where everything is like top notch. It’s progressive, it gets better and better as it goes on.”

You can find AG on Soundcloud at https://soundcloud.com/whosag and on Facebook at

https://facebook.com/whosAG/.