Jaylen Hart Breaks Out of the Box with 'HEY JAYLEN'
Jaylen Hart turns punk roots, trance influence, and Denver techno energy into his boundary-free debut album.
Jaylen Hart is a DJ and producer based in Denver, Colorado, working at the seam between house, techno, and hard trance. He calls it Designer techno™: melodic enough to pull you in, percussive enough to keep you moving.
His releases have landed on KIK DRM, Purple Tea Records, Blue Soho, and Palm Lands, with mixes featured on 6AM and rotation across Spotify, Apple Music, and SoundCloud. In Denver he plays alongside the city's underground techno community, with appearances at Quite Right and continued support from local DJs shaping the scene.
Jaylen Hart talks to 6AM about his punk beginnings, Denver’s underground scene, and the personal story behind his boundary-free debut album, HEY JAYLEN.
Hi Jaylen! Thanks for talking to 6AM. For those that are just getting to know your project... You grew up playing drums in ska and punk bands in Daytona Beach. How does a punk kid end up making techno?
I was a listener before anything else. I learned keyboard and drums from my dad and played in bands around the Daytona Beach scene growing up — but after band practice I'd go home and put on Eurotrance and Euro dance records. It was kind of a secret of mine, because nobody in my circle was into that music, not even my bandmates. I couldn't help it. That's just what I liked.
What actually flipped the switch from listening to producing?
EDC 2021, coming out of COVID — my first one. Standing at Kinetic Field watching Tiësto, as crazy as it might sound, I just got inspired. And what I realized since is it doesn't matter if I'm in a warehouse somewhere in Amsterdam or at a huge festival — there's a through line, a feeling that's the same. I knew I wanted to learn how to make this music.
The album's called HEY JAYLEN — a debut with 15 tracks covering a lot of ground. Why so wide?
It spans the full spectrum of the music I've been inspired by. You'll find hypnotic techno on there, trance, more of the dance-pop and club side too. For years I was submitting tracks to labels and getting the same feedback — "the production's great, it's just not the right fit for our sound." So I'd bend what I was writing to fit their sound, just to check the box off for a release. And it took the magic away from writing for me. People might say I'm all over the place. I say f*** the box.
The opening track, "Good Morning," has a story behind it. What is it?
It's dedicated to my parents, who aren't here anymore. I find that writing music — and writing this album as a body of work — is a way to stay connected to them. That's the first thing you hear on the record, and that's on purpose.
You're rooted in Denver now. What does the scene look like from the inside?
It showed me that a lot of what I was looking for, community-wise, is right here in my backyard. Getting asked to play an afterhours here pushed me to crate-dig in ways I hadn't before, and I got to write this album with four amazing artists, several of them Denver-based. There's real innovation happening here.
What's next after July 14?
I just recorded my SUMMER26 mix — house-forward, high-energy — and have another guest mix for a collective here in Denver that I’m excited to share.