Ten Walls, born as Marijus Adomaitis, is a Lithuanian producer and DJ now unfortunately known for his extremely controversial homophobic and hate-filled Facebook post from 2015. Ten Walls was a rising star until his social media rant with hit singles such as “Walking With Elephants” that was featured on the top ten list in the UK and constantly played at electronic festivals around the world. The video for “Walking With Elephants” was also nominated for Best International Video during the UK Music Video Awards and he went on to win a M.A.M.A for Best Electronic Act – a Lithuanian equivalent of a Grammy award.
However, since 2015, Ten Walls has tried to distance himself (understandably) from the entire situation and, as a result, the community as a whole – but he has recently opened up about the incident in an exclusive interview with XLR8R.
During his tour circa June 2015, the artist published a Facebook post that compared gay sex to pedophilia and also suggested that homosexuals and the LGBT community were of a “different breed” that needed fixing via violent measures. Needless to say, this rant was not well received amongst the innately PLUR dance community.
After this disaster of a post happened, Ten Walls went on to describe the whole situation as a “meltdown” that he attributed to being stressed. He went on to issue apologies, although he was still ostracized from the community.
Marc Rowlands of XLR8R interviewed Ten Walls in July of this year and went on to describe Ten Wall as “intelligent and friendly, but clearly not the most socially adept individual.” Ten Walls also discussed his musical training and his spiritual beliefs with Marc, despite the animosity he experienced from the community as a result of his rant. Ten Walls said:
“I have many ambitions. I would like to play in clubs and at festivals with dance music. I would like to play one time a year with a symphony orchestra,” and “I make music not only for myself but to make people happy. To see thousands of them enjoying your music is something that’s really special. It’s an amazing feeling when you play for 10,000 people.”
On the topic of homophobia in general, he explained that “I never wrote anything that linked gay people with pedophiles,” and continued on:
“I never called them another breed. In my post there is no gay, no homosexual, no nothing. My post had three chapters. After each chapter there was a video. You know, it’s very hard to talk about this.”
He essentially summed up his rant to be a result of mistranslation. However, this was not accepted amongst the community as a reasonable explanation. It is clear that the topic makes Ten Walls uncomfortable but he goes on to say this about gay marriage: “They have their life, I have my life. I’ve said what I can tell. That’s it. I’m a musician. Everybody has their life.”
You can read the full interview here.
