AHEE: “Now I Can See How to Dream Even Bigger”

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**AHEE swung by before phase three of his BassQuest tour to talk about his recent collaborative EP, BassQuest Vol. 2, and his unique audiovisual shows.**

Since January, Portland-based bass music producer and educator AHEE has spent most weekends on the road, steadily making his way through a packed 2026 schedule. With a newly announced phase three of his BassQuest tour extending the run through the end of the year, this is, by all accounts, his biggest year of gigging yet.

In the brief window before the next phase kicks off in Los Angeles on August 21, AHEE reflected on his whirlwind year so far.

This was a dream of mine since I was six years old. Seeing people come out en masse to the shows and getting to play some amazing dream festivals has just been so much fun. The energy at these shows has been so creative and fun, and it’s really showing me what is possible. I feel like my dreams have come true and more, and now I can see how to dream even bigger.

AHEE

The tour shares its name with the two EPs he’s released this year: BassQuest Vol. 1, released in March, and BassQuest Vol. 2, released in July. Both came out on his label, Zot Records, which he launched with Wylie Cable last year.

While Vol. 1 was a solo effort showcasing AHEE’s sonic range and technical sound design, Vol. 2 is a mega collab EP. Featuring eight artists, it celebrates both the collaborative ethos of EDM and AHEE’s close friendships with these fellow producers.

“I’ve worked with all these artists over the years. They’ve all been friends of mine and we’ve gone on various tours and shows together, and we’ve known each other for different lengths of time,” AHEE explained. “That’s how the music came about, through the friendships made by all being artists together. It just made sense to showcase all these collaborations in one massive package.”

AHEE’s favorite part about working on a song with other producers is watching their ideas converge and hearing the music transform and evolve along the way. Many of the songs on BassQuest Vol. 2 sprouted from experiences and connections in AHEE’s life that he described as “special.” But they were over two years in the making and were revisited over several-hour sessions every few months.

“Alien Dirt” with Dirtwire and Honeycomb came about a few years after AHEE and the former artist released a sample pack together on Splice, with several of the song’s sound elements drawn from the pack. “Smoke A Blunt” with Stylust was the final product of many hangout sessions.

Meanwhile, “Fiyah” with Subdocta marks his and AHEE’s first official collaboration since they met at Lucidity over ten years ago. “It’s like a full circle moment where we were starting off as these small artists at a festival, but now we’re able to tour around the US together because of our music,” AHEE said.

While AHEE is perhaps best known for his dynamic and experimental space bass sound, he does not want to be put in a box. He says that he makes anything and everything, including drum and bass or bass house, as heard in “Hit The Rhythm” with SoDown and “Connection” with Manic Focus and Colby Buckler on BassQuest Vol. 2.

I don’t wanna limit how I express myself. Even right now, I’m thinking about what genres could be made that no one’s ever heard of, but are still super fun. I believe in a hundred years of bass music, and we’re in the beginning stages of that in the first few decades.

AHEE

AHEE’s creative vision for BassQuest and the overarching positive, alien-themed aesthetic defining his brand extends beyond the music and into the visuals he incorporates into his live sets. Having worked as a professional live visual artist in the past, he said it felt super important for him to be able to express himself both visually and sonically.

The way he does this is through a fully self-controlled audiovisual setup where he’s DJing both video and audio clips on CDJs at the same time. He creates or commissions his visuals and sequences them to specific moments in each song before exporting them as .mov and .mp4 files into his live mixing software, Rekordbox Performance Mode.

From there, his CDJs allow him to control the music and visuals simultaneously. This gives him the flexibility to read the crowd and improvise the direction of a set on a whim while still keeping the visuals perfectly synced to the music, rather than being locked into a rigid, pre-planned, and time-coded sequence.

Whether he’s using the visuals to tell a story or to complement and amplify the music he’s playing depends entirely on the music, AHEE said. If a song has a story, then he tries telling it through the visuals. If it’s a more ambient track, he’ll make lyric videos in CapCut or use visuals that fit the song’s mood and atmosphere.

While AHEE said he’s performed shows with no visuals that have been “excellent” and “fantastic,” he still considers them a very important part of shaping the experience fans have when seeing him live.

One of the reasons for this is that his sets include audio skits that simply wouldn’t work without a visual component. He gave two examples: one featuring two of his friends dressed as aliens and explaining bass music on an alien podcast, and another in which AHEE plays a “nutty professor” and goes on an “unhinged rant” about how UFOs work. He said neither moment would have the same impact through audio alone, but the visuals created specifically for these segments have made them highlights of the show for many fans.

There’s only a few more days until he embarks on the third leg of his BassQuest tour. When asked what his favorite part of touring beyond performing his music was, AHEE said it was meeting his fans and hearing their personal stories of how he’s impacted their lives in either small or big ways.

I’ve had people come up to me after a show and say, ‘My wife and I met at your show,’ or ‘I have a kid that loves your music,’ or ‘Your tutorials have helped me in my career.’ Being able to hear it from the people themselves is just phenomenal. The power of music is to change our lives in positive ways, so to actually see and hear the results is one of my favorite things.

AHEE

Those fans have a lot to look forward to from AHEE besides the upcoming run of tour dates. There’s new merch and production on the horizon, but he’s also sitting on over 250 unreleased tracks and has his mind set on releasing a BassQuest Vol. 3.

He also hopes to revive his YouTube channel, which has been inactive for two years but previously attracted a strong following because of his producer tip videos. “If you wanna see 100 years of bass music, you have to teach young people how to create this stuff,” he said.

Beyond instructing novice producers how to make music, he’s also continuing to grow his label to give those up-and-coming artists a platform. As he continues reaching for the stars, AHEE is building something that extends beyond his own career.

“I’ve been building a team of people and getting all these things in place behind the scenes and setting up an engine for long-term success,” AHEE said. “We’re about to step up to the next level, and we’re all working together for a goal.”