ENDO

There are those individuals who are early adopters, then there are those who are innovators. Mike Henderson aka ENDO falls into the latter category. A ubiquitous figure in electronic dance music for going on two decades, ENDO is a musician, a DJ, a teacher, an inventor, and a visionary.

Beats have been driving ENDO as early as the first year of his life when he began drumming, playing in his school band and Punk and Hardcore bands. That is until he decided to travel to Woodstock in 1999. Here, he experienced DJs for the first time. Upon his return to his home state of Vermont, ENDO locked himself away for the next couple of years, perfecting the art of DJing.

“It was an addiction and an obsession,” says ENDO. “It helped that I was a drummer and that I had a mathematical background. Using both of these and having a knowledge of song structure, I am able to calculate when I should stop and start tracks, using my mappings to navigate mathematically so they come in and out of the mix exactly when I want them to.”

Depending on the mood of the party, ENDO adjusts his sets: For dark, minimal and trippy afterhours vibes he will play techno or bass-driven tech-house, on a beach—where you’ll find him more often than not—he’ll bring out happier beats, but he could just as easily drop deep house, bassline house, G-house or funky house.

“My sets are all harmonic progression. I program my iTunes with smart playlists to give me compatible songs. Every song is in key, or intentionally out of key, modulated harmonically,” ENDO says. “You can subliminally play with people’s emotions with harmonic mixing. There’s all this tension, then you give them the harmonic release. You have to tell your story. You have to find the songs that speak to you. That’s the art form, the intuition. A good DJ has good intuition.”

ENDO has unleashed his patented brand of harmonic mixing at events across the globe: Pacha, Marquee, and Cielo in New York, Sound in Los Angeles, Guvernment and Coda in Toronto, Stereo in Montreal, Spybar in Chicago, Heart in Miami, Sands in Ibiza, Club Vertigo in Costa Rica, as well as BPM Festival in Mexico and Electric Festival in Aruba. He has played alongside John Digweed, DJ Craze, Roc Raida, Victor Calderone, Danny Tenaglia, Carl Cox, Chus & Ceballos, Eric Prydz, to name just a few.

ENDO’s technical know-how is an inherent gift. Once he knew electronic music was his future, he enrolled at the prestigious Berklee College Of Music as an electronic music production and music synthesis major. After this, ENDO had a radio show at Massachusetts Institute Of Technology’s college station, 88.9 WMBR FM called “Algorthythms.”

From here ENDO went on to work with Native Instruments as a DJ product specialist and artist trainer. He has taught the ropes to everyone: Dubfire, Sasha, Steve Lawler, Nic Fanciulli, DJ Skribble, Josh Wink, Dennis Ferrer, DJ Dan, DJ Craze, LMFAO, Diplo, Lee Burridge, MSTRKRFT, Carl Cox, David Morales, Victor Calderone, Felix Da Housecat, among many others.

ENDO also has numerous on-line tutorials on Dubspot, which to date have over four million views, and from which he gets positive feedback from regularly including the first ever online DJ Course, Digital DJin with TRAKTOR.

ENDO’s latest venture is the booking app, AGNT. Aimed at DJs and promoters, the handy platform came about after ENDO’s extensive tour managing experience for the likes of Sasha, Nicole Moudaber, Dubfire, Sharam, Pete Tong, among others. Geared toward simplifying the process of booking, the barrage of negotiation e-mails are taken out of the equation with the app having all the information built in. He continues ”This will be a revolutionary new way to book DJs and with our rating system I feel that the good DJs will rise to the top!”