Stepping up for the second installment of CENTER BOOTH Season 2 is rising New York talent DREAM, an enigmatic DJ who eschews the cold austerity of traditional techno in favor of more colorful, celebratory sounds. Growing up in Miami on a diet of bass, electro and Latin groove clearly made its mark on DREAM, whose spicy techno sets mimic the thrilling unpredictability of a great night out.

After high school, DREAM moved to New York to pursue a career as a model, a job that has taken him all over the world working for high-profile clients such as Off-White, UNKNWN and Another Man. In recent years, however, he’s been leaning into his long-held passion for electronic music, picking up DJing in 2021 at the encouragement of his friend and mentor Ultrathem, a trailblazer in the queer Miami techno scene. Within a few months, DREAM had been booked to play Stamina at Art Basel with the likes of DVS1, Freddy K and Volvox, then began to take New York by storm, playing everywhere from Bossa Nova Civic Club, H0L0 and Mood Ring to Paragon and Elsewhere.

His edgy, flair-filled CENTER BOOTH entry is an exercise in controlled chaos, regularly teasing tracks and genres before taking off in an entirely different direction. The warmup section sets the mood, a mercurial twenty minutes of chilly, slowed-down trance, futuristic techno, Eurodance, chopped up vocal house and tweaked club classics. Thereafter, energy levels are kept at a constant high as DREAM cycles through dirty electro, propulsive, driving techno and raunchy club cuts, serving up an upbeat, hedonistic assortment of sounds that plays perfectly as we descend into a steamy summer.