Naor Levi, 24: Trance musician best known as ‘DJ AudioPhiller’

Naor Levi, 24, from Holon, was murdered by Hamas terrorists at the Supernova music festival on October 7.

Known by his stage name DJ AudioPhiller, Levi was attending the festival this time as a partygoer, and when the sirens began he ran to his car with a friend. At 6:37 a.m., he posted on Facebook one word: “khalas” — Hebrew-Arabic slang for stop, or enough.

Shortly afterward he called his mother and told her that he had been shot.

“He told me he loved me, and then he said, ‘Sorry, sorry, sorry’… He said he would always protect us, he said the [foundational prayer] Shema Yisrael,” his mother, Livnat Regev-Levi recounted in an interview. She stayed on the phone with him for 38 minutes before she disconnected to call the police, who didn’t answer. When she called Naor back, he didn’t answer either.

Six days later, his body was found and his family was informed that he had been killed. He is survived by his parents, Livnat and Avi, and his two older siblings, Stav and Adar. He was buried on October 13 in Petah Tikva.

He was remembered by his family and friends as living and breathing music and as a huge fan of the Hapoel Tel Aviv soccer club.

“Naor really loved his music and his freedom — it was the most important thing to him in life,” Livnat told a local news outlet. “He was a very funny guy, a wise prankster, with eyes that feel and see everything.” She recounted that he didn’t fit in well in traditional schooling before he was diagnosed with ADHD and found a new school that paid attention to his needs.

“Together they understood that he was drawn to music, which also gave him a rhythm,” Livat said. During and after his army service, she said, he began to explore music more seriously, and “slowly, Naor became a professional in the art of recording and built a name for himself. He specialized in trance music in the 80s style, which appeals to an older audience… and he had made a name for himself around the world, recording in Portugal and Spain.”

His friend Daniela Gandi, who fled the party with him and was seriously wounded, wrote on his Facebook wall a month after he was killed: “I’m sure that you can hear me talking to you all the time. I miss our silly conversations, messages about music and new tracks that you found me or that I found. Sometimes I see you signed on and I immediately start to cry. Have a good week, my heroic friend. Cheers to the laughs I had with you. Thank you for life. It’s all because of you.”

“My beloved little brother,” his brother Adar wrote on Facebook. “Naori, I never even imagined how much I would miss you.”

His mother noted that his funeral was full of music, as well as red Hapoel t-shirts, and “I put candy on his grave, like he loved, instead of stones… We sang by his grave and we played trance music.”

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