7 Things We Love About Seven Lions

26 year old Santa Barbara based artist Jeff Montalvo, better known as Seven Lions, began producing electronically after submitting a remix of the Above and Beyond song “You Got To Go” into a competition and winning. The greatest part? He used a copy of FL Studio, formerly known as FruityLoops, that a friend had given him to create the remix!

With so many things to love about Jeff and not to mention the upcoming Seven Lions Orlando show, we thought we would share the top seven things that we love about him.

1. He Shared Production Tips With Fans

Jeff shared his top seven production tips with his fans, and we think it’s pretty awesome! He included items from monitor setup to synth tutorials. If you’re interested in learning more about the tips that he shared, head over to this DJ Times article and take a look!

2. His Style of Music is Incomparable

There is definitely a unique style of music that comes to mind when you think of Seven Lions. He varies his musical diversity immensely with tracks such as Strangers, Lose Myself and Don’t Leave. He doesn’t focus on one type of style, something very admirable about him.

3. He Produced Two of Our Favorite EPs

Can you guess what they are? Worlds Apart and The Throes of Winter are definitely at the top of our list for our favorite EPs of all time.

4. He Absolutely Kills it Live

Ultra Music Festival in 2013, EDC Las Vegas in 2014 and now Venue 578 in 2015. He has killed it every time since then, and this time will be no different. Just listening to his sets get us hype for next week! Take a listen to two of his sets that we have had on replay in the office for a few weeks now.

5. Genres Aren’t of Importance to Him

Genres are always a hard topic when it comes to the electronic and dance music scene. Some love them and some hate them. Seven Lions has made it clear in a recent interview with Your EDM that the musical genre of his next song is really only determined by what he is feeling at that moment in time.

Question: Your tracks cover several different subgenres of dubstep and other popular EDM genres. How do you decide what style your going to go with for a certain song?
Answer: I usually have that in mind before I start, and it’s just whatever I’m feeling at the time. I want to make songs that will play out. So with tracks like ‘A Way to Say Goodbye’, I knew I wanted to have something I could play live that would have a very strong sing-along element to it. With songs like ‘Keep It Close’, I knew I didn’t want to make a “dance floor” song , and it was totally out of left-field just as a song people could listen to.

6. The Secret Behind his Luscious Hair Isn’t All That Complicated

It may be hard to believe that there isn’t a huge secret behind keeping his hair awesome. We confirmed with another interview done with Your EDM that Jeff washes his hair every three days and that this is the secret to his wonderfully lush hair.

7. He comes from a metal background

It’s no surprise that we have yet another electronic music guru coming from a metal background. It seems as though these two genres have a lot of the same type of musical influence. While he doesn’t think that there will be a metal and electronic mixed song for a while, he was into metal growing up because of his brother. With punk being his first musical choice, he quickly felt he wanted something heavier and turned to metal.

Catch Seven Lions at Venue 578 on May 14th sharing some great music with Orlando!