The Relm of unique mixing

Mashing clips from "Office Space” and "Little Miss Sunshine” with music and occasional dialogue may not seem like entertainment, but Daly City’s Mike Relm has the spinning ability to bring a new kind of visual and audio experience to the masses.

He’s doing as much on tour opening for the Blue Man Group and honing his skills. Relm, 29, performs a unique skill on stage — spinning vinyl and DVDs to make a normally audio-only performance visual through his original mashups. The Daly City native’s talent didn’t immediately draw an audience. Technology used by Relm is still fairly new. Today he’s touring as the opening act for the Blue Man Group gaining Relm a wider audience in many ways.

"I always try to give the people a better experience than just seeing a guy scratching a record,” he said. "That’s great for 10 minutes, but even for me it’s like I need something different.”

Growing up, Relm’s dream of creating a visual music performance as a disc jockey was far from a reality — the technology was literally not invented yet.

Relm, the oldest of two boys, was very into computers. The multimedia option wasn’t around, but Relm enjoyed writing alone — just enjoying the creative process. Although he’d take ideas from others, it was always up to Relm to make it all run smoothly.

Music was a passion beginning in high school.

Relm, who attended El Camino Real High School in South San Francisco, was in a disc jockey group his freshman year.

"It was not a school-sanctioned group,” he said with a laugh. "When you’re in high school, you’re like, ‘what am I going to do?’ Football? Not for me. Cars? Not really for me. If I DJ, that’s something I can probably do. At dances I would watch the DJ mix and I thought, ‘that doesn’t seem too hard.’ Playing a song. Mixing it and making people happy.”

Relm and his brother saved money and bought turntables. At that point, nothing else mattered. The skill began clicking for Relm in his last years of high school. He graduated in 1996 but claims he didn’t get good until 1998.

Classes at San Francisco State University weren’t a fit for Relm. Classes were hard to get but gigs weren’t — which Relm admitted was a horrible reason to take a break from school. Performances began locally and grew. Bur Relm always wanted to do something more, something visual as well. He would throw a DVD on the screen but it never quite matched the music and it had to be looped — Relm didn’t have time while spinning to change the DVDs.

The career choice was a scary one for Relm’s parents who imagined it would lead to performing in weddings every week, he joked. At that time there weren’t a lot of opportunities for a DJ either.

Competitions helped the family understand the possibilities. In 1999, Relm won the International Turntablist Federation’s USA competition. His mom went with him to Hawaii for international level.

From there it was hard to know what to do.

His act changed a little over three years ago in Japan. While touring in Japan, Relm was asked what sort of things he enjoyed. Movies came up. It was at that moment his show changed.

The story may be embellished, Relm warned. But in his mind, he said the day was glorious.

Relm was brought into a back room at Pioneer and shown the DVD turntable — a device that allows him to manipulate video images in real-time.

"To me it was like magic. They hooked it up to the TV, popped in a video and did a scratch thing. … After 10 to 12 years of just scratching vinyl and getting the sounds, my entire world just turned upsides down just from seeing what you could do with it,” he said.

Relm took on home with him. Plans for the future use were being formulated on the way home.

Once Relm had the hang of the technology he was faced with another challenge — finding an audience.

He first performed at an art gallery, which worked well.

Many clubs could not offer the set up Relm needed to make his performances perfect. It became an all or nothing thing.

"When you’re doing something for so long and it’s your whole life, you take for granted how technical it really is. I think a lot of my early shows kind of went over people’s heads — not because I’m smarter. … It’s just because it’s new. I can’t do it and expect people to understand what’s going on just because I know,” he said.

Now Relm explains early in his performances that he’s controlling both the music and visual mashups from the turntables.

Videos of his work made it to YouTube, which were then seen by members of the Blue Man Group. Relm had just gotten off a tour himself. It was around Christmas time and he was looking forward to a chill year. Then he got a call to start touring in about a month.

Relm had to rework his performance. Now it needed to be in 25 minutes and family-friendly. The Blue Man Group brings an audience ranging from 5 to 75 years old. Relm was used to a 20s to early 30s crowd. Change was a challenge.

"When you’re used to doing shows with 21s and over, you start to rely on cheap little visual tricks, songs and sounds that aren’t appropriate for kids. Not that anything’s wrong with it, but it’s great to have a challenge,” he said.

Now the large audiences occur five times a week — a feat Relm used to experience once a year if he was lucky. During his down time on tour, Relm works on side projects like his DVD that’s coming out in April. The project allowed Relm to really bring to life what he likes on DVDs, the extras.

Live performances will of course be included. But there will also be many skits, all in 3D.

He took last summer off and performed at the 2007 Coachella Valley Music and Arts Festival and Bonnaroo, as well as the renowned Audiotistic-Future Sound Festival.

His inspirations and extras are helping Relm realize, he never really grew up. Interestingly, that’s something he gets to share with the now younger fan base finding his work.

"For me, I don’t want to make them feel any of this is unattainable,” he said. "That’s how I felt when I was younger: it’s not possible. That was really discouraging when people say, ‘you can’t really make a living doing that. You gotta have a fall back. Take business and have a fall back. Become an accountant or a programmer.’ If you put that much time and effort into your fall back plan you end up doing that. And this is the main thing I’m putting all my effort into.”

To see Mike Relm’s work visit www.myspace.com/mikerelm.

Heather Murtagh can be reached by e-mail: heather@smdailyjournal.com or by phone: (650) 344-5200 ext. 105.