About

Hi and welcome to Dreams in Audio, a growing mix of visual and aural nourishment that includes records, mixtapes, art, design and daily musings from around the web.

D.I.A. is the alter ego of art director, designer, DJ and avid record collector Brian Ho. The idea for this site came from my love for mixes, a habit that began in elementary school and one that eventually ballooned through my interest in DJing and vinyl curiosities. Those curiosities span pretty much everything, with a current emphasis on jazz, African and Brazilian records, but also soul/funk, latin, reggae, psych, rock, hip hop and soundtracks.

Dreams in Audio will feature mixes that I compile myself, by guests, or ones that I find around the internet that can serve as a soundtrack for this site as well as your day-to-day.

A little history…

I still remember the first records I ever bought – they were Nirvana’s Nevermind and The Coup’s “Not Yet Free” 12-inch at Tower Records circa 1996. What’s crazy is I didn’t even have a record player at the time, and it wasn’t until 2000 that I bought my first turntable and started to actually buy records – initially hip hop records for DJing, and then others to sample from as I started getting into producing.

In college I was heavily involved with music, hosting my own radio show at UC San Diego, writing for the now debunked website Hip Hop Infinity, and interning for Fader magazine. When HHI shut down, I started writing for my friends online magazine Dusted, and when my internship with Fader ended I had a brief stint with Def Jux Records. It was around this time that I really started getting into DJing, releasing three mixes under my alias DJ Maru. Two of them, Maru’s Sketch and Killing You Softly were mash-up inspired and to my surprise were very well received. My then website, djmaru.com, was even written up in LA Confidential magazine as a “website any music lover will love,” alongside artists like DJ Shadow and Z-Trip – this was a definite high point for me. My third and last “official” mix under the DJ Maru moniker was called REM Creeps, a mix of downtempo and laid back electronic inspired tracks.

As I got more and more into digging up old records, I decided to start my first blog called Ear Fuzz in 2006, an outlet I used to share music and records that I thought were worth sharing. I recruited some friends and other record bloggers to widen the site’s scope, and to this day it remains a popular resource for record collectors and music lovers alike.

I stopped writing for Ear Fuzz around 2008 as I was searching for something that was not only unique in the blogsphere, but also felt like an accurate reflection of my interests. Realizing there wasn’t an all encompassing music blog that focused on both sights and sounds, and with my deep involvement with music and art, Dreams in Audio was born in 2009.

I hope you enjoy what you see and hear.

Thanks for visiting!
–Brian