Album premiere: Dirty South wants to be 'With You'

See the album, hear the movie.

That's the maxim of Dirty South's latest project With You, an album-and-short-film combo that is undoubtedly the Serbian DJ's most ambitious venture to date.

Recorded at his studio in Los Angeles over three-and-a-half months, the 12-song With You has a dreamy sound and indie spirit, says Dragan Roganovic, premiering his second album on usatoday.com ahead of its Nov. 4 release. Working with up-and-comers such as Sam Martin, Gita Lake and Ruben Haze, "there were no egos," he says. "It was just making music for the sake of it, not because you're trying to make chart music or anything like that."

Without realizing it, he was also making the soundtrack for his 38-minute With You short film, which incorporates songs off the album and was released on iTunes in September. Listening to it for the first time, "that's where the inspiration for the film came from: the music itself," he says. "I was tired of just straight-up dance music and wanted to branch out musically, but still keep it electronic. It's more musical and (there's) more storytelling than ever before."

Influenced by the intelligent blockbusters of Christopher Nolan and Darren Aronofsky, the film's narrative follows a young boy who falls in love with a girl from another planet and fights to reunite to with her. Shot, edited and scored over four months, "the whole thing was very overwhelming, but it was also very thrilling because I was learning as I was going," Roganovic says. Having only dabbled in filmmaking beforehand, "it was kind of like going to film school without actually going to film school."

Moving forward, the Grammy-nominated DJ and producer would like to explore other creative outlets and genres, and is already working on another film project. When he embarked on With You, "I was at a point where it was like, 'It's time to grow up and try some new things,' " Roganovic says. "Hopefully when people see this, they'll see that I've evolved and can do more than just dance music."

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