Disco Shrine

On an oddly warm Saturday in February, the Rickshaw Stop in San Francisco is gearing up for a late night. Ninajirachi, the Australian producer and DJ known for her glossy blend of EDM and hyperpop, is headlining the weekend show, and she has picked three openers—Disco Shrine, emotegi, and Synova—to galvanize the crowd. There is nothing unusual about this setup except for one personal detail: I am on the show’s guest list because Jess, who performs under the moniker Disco Shrine and otherwise goes by her nickname Disco, is a friend of a friend and has graciously put my name on her entourage list. 

Just before she has to go on stage as the main support act, Disco makes her way through the crowd to come say hi. She clearly stands out in the audience, with her bleached hair, dark mascara, glittery white top, short pink skirt, and knee-high chunky-sole white leather boots. Sweet and down-to-earth and funny, Disco is telling me college stories about Urie, our friend in common, and it’s almost surreal to think that in a few minutes she has to be on stage, in front of us, and give the people what they want. And what people want that night, very visibly, is to party.  

She soon goes up on stage, places a neon-lit DISCO SHRINE sign on the DJ table, starts the music, picks up the mic, and confidently looks at the crowd. 

“San Francisco! I am Disco Shrine. Also known as—” she pauses for effect and smiles mischievously, “Persian Barbie.”

It quickly becomes obvious that the set is not what the audience expected. At peak moments—the pop choruses and the club-banger drops in her set—Disco breaks the fourth wall and switches off her DJ self to switch on her pop-star self. She comes to the front of the stage and does a choreographed dance. She later comes down to the audience and dances with two dudes in the front row, who seem both petrified and electrified by what’s happening. In the last third of her set, she sings her own track, the upcoming single “Disco Daddy.” 

And, for the last track in her DJ set, Aqua’s “Barbie Girl,” the cheekily self-referential homage, Disco brings two muscular studs (her Kens) on stage and they perform a full-blown group choreo. By the time Disco’s performance is over, the Rickshaw Stop is packed and the atmosphere is hot and heavy. With her charmingly chimeric performance, Disco gave the crowd what they asked for, and then some more.   

After the show, in the wee hours of the night, I linger awkwardly by the merch section—while Disco is chatting with the friends and fans who came out to support her—and I wait for the right moment to say bye and confirm the details of our interview. It’s a tight schedule because Disco has to go back to LA in four days, but we make it work and we meet three days later, on a rainy and cold day, at Stonemill Matcha on Valencia Street. There, we order chicken katsu sandwiches and iced strawberry matcha lattes. Disco is thrilled. 

“I was afraid this might be too out there for a lunch-slash-interview, but for some reason I also thought you would be a big fan of Japanese food,” I say. 

“Oh my god,” she laughs, “everything about this place is one hundred percent me. You nailed it.” 

Disco spent the past few days unwinding from the jam-packed weekend. The San Francisco show on Saturday was right after the Seattle show on Friday, which means there was very little time in between to be a regular human being. 

“Whenever I finish a show, there is so much adrenaline,” she says excitedly. “I can barely sleep. My life is very chaotic when I tour, but I thrive in chaos. ”

This tour was somewhat of a serendipity. A few years ago, Disco had met Nina (of Ninajirachi) through some of her Australian friends. This year, unbeknown to either Disco or Nina, Nina’s manager reached out to Disco’s manager to see if Disco Shrine could be the opening act for Ninajirachi’s 4x4 EP North American Tour. The managers were unaware Disco and Nina already knew each other, so when the word finally got out, Nina reached out to Disco to say that the setup could not have been better. 

“I was really impressed by your ability to switch so effortlessly between being a DJ and pop star,” I add. “Plus, I feel like that wasn’t necessarily the easiest crowd. Did you make some of those decisions, like when you came down into the audience, on the spot or was that planned?”

“Thank you! That really means a lot. You know, it’s a blend. Some of the stuff in that show was planned, like the choreography and specific tracks I wanted to play. But, for some, I just picked up on the audience’s energy and reacted to that. The moment you’re describing, I felt I had to come down and interact with the crowd. When the audience is shy, it’s my responsibility as a performer to change that.” 

This intuitive ability to read the room comes from Disco’s experience in theater, which she did during college, and from having the support from other music artists to test out and evolve her stage persona.  

“Last year, I toured with Matt Bennett,” Disco adds, “and it was such a great experience. Matt gave me a lot of freedom to do what I wanted with my performance, and his fans were so excited and receptive. Having that as an artist is always an incredible opportunity. I also work closely with my friend Liz Nistico, who is the person behind Revenge Wife, and who also used to be the lead singer of the duo HOLYCHILD. She helped me out with some of the choreo for the show.”

But it also comes from Disco’s comfort to take risks and fail. Before she allowed herself to channel through her Persian Barbie pop star, Disco had flowy black hair, wore dresses, and performed sentimental indie songs. It didn’t feel right and Disco felt that her songs led the audiences in the wrong direction. She wanted to make them happy, not sad.

She did some soul-searching for a while to figure out the best path forward, and ultimately made a decision that at the time seemed trivial but ended up being a critical moment in her life—she bleached her hair. It unleashed a sense of agency and a sense of ownership that Disco did not feel before. The look made her stand out. She still accentuated the Persian features, her dark eyebrows and her dark-brown eyes, but there was now suddenly the eye-catching bleached hair, a counterculture element, an emblem of carefreeness. And thus the Persian Barbie was born.

Musically, the transformation allowed Disco to fully embrace the theatricality and boldness that pop music provided. She started producing music that made her happy and that gave audiences the jolt she had sought to induce. Things started to come together, and within just a few years, Disco Shrine was on festival and tour rosters alongside the likes of Matt Bennett, Charli XCX, Tiësto, Alison Wonderland, COBRAH, and Ninajirachi. With the electronic-pop-star transformation also came the party element that not every pop musician enjoys but that Disco fully embraced and loved: DJing. 

“Okay,” I continue, “I have a question about something I am always curious about. How do you know how much of your music to mix into your DJ set? Like, when you surprised us on Saturday and performed your upcoming single ‘Disco Daddy’ in the middle of your set, did you think about how the audiences would react?”

“It’s a tricky balance,” Disco answers. “When you make music, it’s hard to have an objective way of knowing how your music sounds to others. Especially when you’re mixing it with other artists’ songs as part of a DJ set, it’s very hard to know whether your music is the right music at that specific moment. I don’t know that I have a precise formula, but it’s definitely a risk and it’s hard because you basically have to look at your own music and say ‘Okay, this might not be the vibe.’”

“Does that mean you have to not think of your music as your music when DJing?”

“Definitely, because I have to think like a DJ, not like a singer-songwriter,” she nods. “For example, with my last EP, xoxo, disco, I had to learn how to detach from it when DJing. I mean, it’s my baby, I love that EP. But it won’t always jibe well with the music I’m mixing, so that’s when I have to think objectively about what is best for the audience at that particular moment.” 

“Do you think having to make those decisions, as a result of being both a DJ and singer-songwriter, makes you better at your craft?”

“For sure. As a matter of fact,” Disco answers, “DJing for me has been the best way to learn how to deal with uncontrollable scenarios when performing.”

“Really? How come?”

“It’s almost guaranteed that something will go wrong when you are DJing,” she continues. “The equipment starts glitching, people spill drinks over your controller, or there is something wrong with the electricity. I mean, so many things go wrong all the time.”

“That sounds like a nightmare.”

“It’s very stressful,” Disco laughs. “You either fight or flight in those scenarios. But, I’m a fighter, and having those stressful moments taught me how to improvise and adjust on the spot. Which proved to be very useful in performances of my own songs.”  

This personality trait, according to Disco, is a result of being raised by immigrant parents. Her mom and dad fled Iran decades ago, when the Iranian Revolution upended their lives in the late seventies, and began the new chapters of their lives in Los Angeles. Disco is their fourth child and the youngest of the four. 

“I think being a first-generation kid in America has been a big part of my identity growing up,” she says. “It’s hard, my parents were given a clean slate when they came to California, which was great, but it also meant they had to fight to get what they wanted. This is something that I always saw in my dad. If he wanted something, he always found a way to get it. I think that taught me how to be resourceful in my own life.”

The side effect of growing up in a resourceful and tenacious immigrant family is that it comes with big expectations, especially when it comes to career choices. Disco cracks up when I ask her what it was like when she told her Persian family she was going to become a pop star. 

“There was definitely hesitancy in the beginning,” she says laughingly. “My entire life, all I’ve heard was that I should be a doctor or a lawyer or a business person.” 

But the hesitancy faded in 2018 when Disco released her song “Up in the Air,” a pop homage to the struggles her parents faced when they immigrated to the US. For the single’s cover, Disco wore red leather shorts and a black sweater, with بالا در هوا  (‘Up In the Air’ in Persian alphabet) printed on it. After the release of the single, she went on a Persian TV channel and promoted the song, talking about its significance for her and her family’s history. 

“My dad went with me,” Disco adds, “and I think seeing me on TV, talking about the song, made him realize that this wasn’t just a phase. He saw I was committed to this as my career.”

“Is your family the first to hear your music when you’re working on new stuff?” I ask. 

“Uh,” Disco chuckles, “well, I have learned to not always listen to my family’s advice when it comes to my music. I feel like you really have to have a thick skin when you’re sharing your work with family.”

“Really?” I laugh. “So, they always tell you what they really think?”

“Yes, they do,” Disco nods. “My mom is brutally honest.”

After our lunch at Stonemill Matcha, Disco and I spend the rest of the afternoon walking around the neighborhood, drinking more coffee, and trying out bizarre snacks, like the ant lollipops from Paxton Gate on Valencia Street. Which are exactly what they sound like—real ants encased in neon-pink and neon-blue hard candy. (For the record, we both freaked out and threw the lollipops in the trash before we reached the dead ants.) We eventually end up at Discodelic, a record store on 24th Street, where we talk a bit more about the art of putting on a live show. 

There is a lot that happens behind the scenes to make a Disco Shrine show successful. The DJing component demands active listening of pop music, and Disco strongly believes in the power of capturing current pop culture in her sets. That’s why songs like Sophie-Ellis Bextor’s “Murder on the Dancefloor,” Princess Superstar’s “Perfect (Exceeder),” Alice Deejay’s “Better Off Alone,” and Kim Petras’ “Treat Me Like a Slut” were part of her San Francisco set. It was Disco’s nod to the Saltburn-meets-Slut Pop Y2K revival era that will surely go down in history as the trademark vibe of the early 2020s. 

The pop-star component of the show, on the other hand, demands physical and analytical diligence. Exercise is a critical component of Disco’s everyday routine because she needs to have enough endurance for the choreographed parts of the show, which require both individual practice and, very often, group practice with dancers over Facetime and at soundchecks. At each show, Disco also has a videographer who records the performance. When the show is done and the audiences go home, Disco rewatches the performance and analyzes what needs to be improved. 

“I really don’t like watching myself,” she laughs, “but it’s the best way to improve as a performer.”    

“That’s impressive, having that type of objective analysis of yourself,” I add. “But does that mean you have a hard time watching other people’s performances without overanalyzing them?”

“You know, it’s so funny you bring this up! I have definitely noticed that. Once I started performing, it became harder to go out and simply enjoy someone else’s show. I am now definitely paying more attention to the technical details of the show setup. I will say though that one thing has not changed. If it’s a really great show, I forget to pay attention to all these details. When I realize that I haven’t been overanalyzing someone else’s performance, that’s when I know I attended a great show. I was present.”

The live show is the culmination of Disco’s art, but it’s an apex that’s built upon not only months of preparation but also months of writing music. It’s the part that often gets overlooked for singer-songwriters—the time spent in solitude, creating music and obsessing over every detail. Disco, who learned music theory through playing the guitar, usually starts the writing process by creating melodies on the instrument. Words come next, and Disco has a giant Notes file on her iPhone which she uses to write down the lyrics to her songs (she tells me that “Disco Daddy” was written entirely in the Notes file). The writing process is then followed by production, during which the acoustic demo gets translated into a pop song. While this all sounds sequential and organized, in reality, it happens in bursts and in the most unexpected moments.

“I dream melodies,” Disco adds. “And then, I will wake up in the middle of the night, grab my phone, open the Voice Memo app, and sing. But, I would say, I most often come up with lyrics and melodies when I am in my car, stuck in the LA traffic. I don’t know why, but that’s when I get my best ideas. I think I’m very LA in that way.”

I ask Disco what advice she would give to other aspiring artists who want to enter the music industry. What’s something that she wishes she knew when she was starting out? 

“First, don’t be a perfectionist,” she answers immediately. “Try everything and don’t be afraid to experiment. You have to see what works and what doesn’t by actually doing it. Second, it has to feel right. It shouldn’t always be an uphill battle. When I embraced the Persian Barbie persona and started DJing, things clicked. It was still a lot of work obviously, but everything started to feel natural. Third, I would say, never lose your ability to be in the moment. It’s so easy to just go through the motions of everyday life and not process what is actually happening to you.”

“Right. Otherwise you’re just on autopilot,” I add. 

“Exactly. As an artist, you can’t always wait for inspiration to come your way. Sometimes, you have to go and search for it, and it comes when you’re out there, absorbing the world around you, when you are—”

She briefly pauses, looking for the right phrase, and then smiles.

“When you are actually living your life.”