We were lucky to catch up with Mike Greene (PKA Orno) recently and have shared our conversation below.

Alright, Mike thanks for taking the time to share your stories and insights with us today. When did you first know you wanted to pursue a creative/artistic path professionally?

That eureka moment of wanting to pursue music professionally I believe fully took shape after I released my first EP under Orno called ‘Ascend EP.’

At the time, this felt like the biggest project of my life and I had written 4 very interconnected and special songs to me within it. It was the first time I ever took songwriting and concept seriously within music– as in my previous years with various aliases, I was more centered in fun drop-based EDM tracks. With ‘Ascend’ this EP took a very dance music centric approach but with more emotion and atmosphere which I had brought to the surface for the first time. Atmosphere within my music became one of my most important traits that I still carry with me in the modern age of Orno, so this first EP really did teach me a lot.

Awesome – so before we get into the rest of our questions, can you briefly introduce yourself to our readers.

For those who are just learning about me– I’m Orno, an electronic music producer out of Los Angeles, CA. I began producing music in late 2010 early 2011 after discovering Daft Punk and various other dance music artists. The music I make is a vast blend of Electronic, Dance Music/EDM, Pop, and Ambient/Cinematic. I also sing on all of my music as well, and that is becoming a very essential part of any music I make and will continue to be.

My alias’s origin stems from a storybook my parents had made for me that I had read when I was much younger. It was about me going on an adventure amongst dinosaurs, the main dinosaur being named ‘Orno’. It’s a very sentimental thing to me that I will always be happy to indulge people on when explaining my music to them. Making music is such a therapeutic and grounding outlet for me to translate my feelings that are normally much harder to express in words and doing it this way is extremely cathartic for me.

I’m very excited about a few projects I have been working on over the past year and a half, one being my first ever Album, and another being volume 2 of my ‘Tapes For Grounding’ series which is a collection of ambient songs. So excited to finish them both and share them with the world!

What’s a lesson you had to unlearn and what’s the backstory?

It’s something I am still currently unlearning but I have made strides with it in the past year or so and that would be comparing myself to others. I tend to do that a lot with my music using my peers and other creatives as a comparison and I tend to belittle how far I’ve come with these comparisons. But as of recent I’ve become more and more confident in what I am working on as well as more confident in myself as a person externally and internally, and I feel like at this point in my music making career, I am making music that I actually like to listen to. This has been a goal forever and to feel that secure in my art is such a liberating feeling.

What do you think is the goal or mission that drives your creative journey?

The mission that is driving me right now is the act of letting go and not putting pressure on myself when writing music. This has been something I’ve been living by since the inception of my unreleased album and it’s done nothing but good for me. It made me feel enjoyment writing music again, I’m just having fun and it’s changed the game for me. I want to keep living by this cause nothing but good will come out of it. I advocate all artists whether it be music, visual etc. to also live by this!

Contact Info:

• Website: linktr.ee/OrnoMusic
• Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/ornomusic/
• Twitter: https://twitter.com/ornomusic
• Youtube: https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCzO47DzmbORamX65T_aUmMA
• Other: Bandcamp: https://ornomusic.bandcamp.com

Image Credits
Eileen Wisco Christian Dietz