About
DJ and producer Body Rock was born in 1984 in Chicago, IL, USA. Fitting that his birthplace was responsible for dance music scenes that pushed the envelope for house and other forms of electronic music, as his life has been increasingly pulled into the culture and lifestyle of music that makes the people move. Body Rock (known also as Robert Lester by friends and family) graduated from University of Michigan in 2008 with a degree in Music Technology, during which time he founded the dance-rock band My Dear Disco with fellow collaborators Tyler Duncan and Michelle Chamuel.
While at school, when not gigging with My Dear Disco, Body Rock performed at primarily underground parties and experimental events. This approach to performing was highly improvisational and experimental, often combining live electronic manipulation of spoken word audio with dancefloor cuts and ambient tracks. As his involvement with My Dear Disco grew, so did his time commitment and soon after graduation the group was touring all over the country, from Alaska to Atlanta, hitting up major national festivals such as Lollapalooza, SXSW, CMJ, Wakarusa, Summercamp, and many more. During the first few years of hard touring, DJ opportunities slipped by, but his aesthetic was evolving. The party-rocking success of My Dear Disco created a greater knowledge of how to get people moving, taking the head-nodding and wall hugging and transforming them into dancefloor ecstatic shakers and movers.
In the summer of 2009 Body Rock took back to the decks so to speak to fill in the gaps in My Dear Disco’s touring schedule with his own performances. It didn’t take long before he graduated from underground parties to scoring gigs at clubs around Ann Arbor and other Michigan cities. In early 2010 he secured a monthly gig at Ann Arbor’s premiere dance club NECTO. Body Rock Saturday’s became his outlet to present and promote new music and to invite out other DJ’s he found inspiring. On occasion, Body Rock will perform before or after My Dear Disco sets too, inflicting his flavor of branded dance floor funk on the crowds. As people are finding out Body Rock sets are always funky and fresh, thought-provoking and progressive, they are positively uplifting. Drawing from his experiences as a performer, songwriter, and producer in electro-pop band My Dear Disco as well as a solo producer of electronica and techno, his sets create an ecstasy of movement in which tension and release ebb and flow, building up to drive dancers to a frenzy before placing them gently back into solid groove.
