CEO, Creative Director

Zack has been a professional graphic artist since 1995. Prior to discovering his calling in digital art he was the editor of his college newspaper, a manager of a pre-press department, writer, journalist, environmental activist and community networker. With his lifelong friend, Damian Peters, Zack started Greenfield Graphics & Printing in 1997. The company’s artwork in print and electronic media developed a loyal following. After 5 years of running his own company, Zack decided to return to the workforce to gain more expertise in large project management, high-end database driven websites, visionary arts, branding, marketing, publicity, e-commerce and other industry skills. For two years, Zack worked as the Creative Director at Ursa Minor Arts & Media where he managed a full-service multimedia team at a state-of-the-art facility. Afterward he built a design & e-commerce department for marketing whiz, Mark Luzaich. There he worked with Kate Schneider for two years to build and manage many successful online stores.

Once the projects were complete, Zack and Kate joined forces and formed their own marketing, design & web development company, Zack Darling Creative Associates, which has its offices in Santa Rosa, California. ZDCA offers its clients a wide variety of new media, art and technology products and services to individuals and businesses and continues to build strong partnerships with companies, organizations and individuals that carry a common vision to bring consciousness to the world.

His passion for the creative side of graphic art is evident in his music industry designs, yet he also exceeds in creating high-impact corporate marketing materials. His mastery of the industry-standard design programs has allowed him to not only produce effective commercial designs, but also bring his graphics deep into the realm of fine digital art. It is this creative look that has built Zack a reputation as a dynamic visual artist in the music and event industry.

• CEO, Creative Director, Zack Darling Creative Associates

• Night Time Production Manager / Creative Director, Harmony Festival

• Lead Producer / Co-Founder, Mystic Beat Lounge

• North Bay Regional Contact, Burning Man Festival

• Resident Graphic Artist, Earthdance Festival

• Executive Producer, Inflatable Arts

• Producer / Co-Founder, Decadance

Mystic Beat Lounge, Decadance, Harmony Festival

Event Producer, Production Manager

Zack Darling began his career as an independent event producer in the North Bay and San Francisco, where he cut his teeth in the dynamic underground and later professional rave scenes. In 1999, Zack co-founded the Mystic Beat Lounge, a new kind of production company that merged live concerts, DJ sets and performance theater (alá Cirque du Soleil), with 21st century visual effects, to create large-scale maximum multi sensory concert experiences.

In this time, Zack also produced many successful music events in clubs and other smaller venues through his nightclub, Decadance. Today, under Zack’s leadership, the Mystic Beat Lounge is best known for the Techno-Tribal Dance, a cutting edge production that has become an integral part of the Harmony Festival, the largest music festival in the North SF Bay Area. Over eleven years, Techno-Tribal has developed into an annual, 7,000 plus, over-the-top production characterized by cutting edge sound and visual technology with live, DJ and traditional music, fire theater, acrobatic and aerial performances, inflatables, and an interactive live-art zones.

Zack is also the night time production manager and board member of the Harmony Festival, and oversees all of the festival’s after dark productions. Zack works with other producers as an event designer and consultant such as Earthdance Festival, Sea of Dreams, Burning Man, Reggae Rising Music Festival and many others. He has worked for Burning Man festival for 9 years and for the past 5 years, he has served as the North Bay Burning Man Regional Contact. He is also partnered in Inflatable Arts, which specializes in large, illuminated three dimensional props that transform venues.

From his the 500 person night clubs to the 40K+ Burning Man Festival, Zack’s production experience has provided him with a broad understanding 21st century festival and concert production.

DJ Zack Darling

MashStep.com / Mystic Beat Lounge

Visit Zack's latest musical project - the popular music blog, MashStep.com

As long time North SF Bay native event producer and DJ, Zack Darling is well known as a highly effective mover and shaker. His DJ career spans over 20 years and began as a 14 year electro-punk DJ playing late night sessions on public and pirate radio stations in Mendo-fornia. He’s since dropped multi-genre-smackdown beats on night clubs and parties large and small, including Decadance, Space Cowboy’s Unimog, Mystic Beat Lounge’s Techno-Tribal Dance, as well as some of the biggest clubs and dance events in San Francisco, like 1015 Folsom, Temple, Sea of Dreams and Kelly’s Mission Rock and many more. He also regularly plays within the festival circuit, including Burning Man, Burning Man Decompression Street Fair and Harmony Festival. Zack has played every year as a headliner at EarthDance Festival for a decade now, and in 2002 was the first electronic dance music DJ to play the main stage at Reggae on the River where he shocked the Humboldt rasta crowd with nu-skool ragga breaks.

Musically Zack’s style is most difficult to classify as it spans a gamut broader than most dance floor DJs. His mixes are expressions of the alignment between Mashups and bass-heavy dance floor beats. Zack is moving forward into a style where he can follow all of his passions, old and new, merging Breakbeats, House, Dubstep and Mid-Tempo Hip Hop, with Reggae, New Wave, Folk, Funk, Soul and especially classic Rock favorites – remixed, retooled, repurposed for the dance floor. The emerging name for this unique musical flavor of bass-heavy dance floor bootlegs? Mashstep.Recently Zack launched the popular new website www.mashstep.com where fans of this sound explosion can saturate their spirits in bass-heavy dancefloor mashup wompers.

Zack continues to feed the flames of the music community through his event production efforts. He is the lead producer of the Mystic Beat Lounge Techno-Tribal Dance, Associate Producer of Harmony Festival, North Bay Burning Man Regional Contact and co-founder of the cult-following nightclub event, Decadance. He produces many of the graphic art, posters and websites for the Northern California concert and festival industry via his Santa Rosa based company, Zack Darling Creative Associates which also serves as a central point for his event production endeavors.