THE FESTIVAL EDITION
FEATURES
How Rave Music Conquered America And The World BY S I MO N R E Y N O LD S
Jack Ăœ performing alongside Skrillex at Tomorowland 2015
DEPARTMENTS 04 Letter From The Editor
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Contributions Masthead 06 Letters To The Editor INTERVIEWS 60 3LAU 62
Top 10: Biggest Djs In The World
Skrillex
BY J O E L R O B E RTSO N
IN MEMORIAM 64 Avicii
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ARTICLES 34 Festivals & How To Afford Them 38 Fanny Packs Are Back In Fashion?
In This Issue
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A quarterly publication that focuses on the different genres within electronic dance music. This issue is comprised of writings that tackle and focus on the festivals around the world and the DJs
that headline those events. We are for those who listen to electronic dance music and those who are curious about the genre but have not been experienced to it as often.
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Diplo & Major Lazer Bring Their Brand Of Music To Cuba BY J O E CO S CA R E LLI
Electronic Dance Music Has It's Spring Awakening 44 How Ravers Became The New Flower Children 48 Birth of Display 70
“ I know you've been waiting a long time for a party like this”.
The Future Of The Bass Drop 76 Jockey Academia
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BY NE E LU MO HAGHE GH
Rave Culture Move On To The Blockchain
BY B E N V I CK E R S
Zedd, Your Perfect EDM Gateway Act
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FROM THE EDITOR
DEPA RT MENTS
AS WE H EA D IN TO T H E H O M E stretch of what is sure to be another very strong broadcast for the Grammy Awards, I find myself dwelling on one of music’s last big televised shows, the American Music Awards. A strange pairing, perhaps, but bear with me a minute here. I was on standby the night of the A MA ’s. A handful of morning news and entertainment shows let me know that they might tape segments with me discussing the show, depending on how it went. And this is how it went: There were many really strong performances. Jennifer Lopez amazed with a tribute to Celia Cruz. Rihanna, now an elder stateswoman after seven albums, was presented with an icon award — just 25, she recently tied Michael Jackson with her 13th No. 1 on the Billboard Hot 100, trailing only Mariah Carey and the Beatles on Billboard’s all-time list. Justin Timberlake proved he was as adept with a guitar as he is with his dance moves. But to me, the story of the night was the new artists. Ariana Grande made a strong claim to being the young, vocal power to watch with a stripped-down performance of “Tattooed Heart”. Another newcomer, Imagine Dragons, riveted the theater with bombast and giant drums on a medley of their hits “Demons” and “Radioactive”. Macklemore & Ryan Lewis were piped in live from Miami and not only delivered an excellent set but used an acceptance speech to talk about the sort of racial profiling that led to the tragic death of Trayvon Martin. And as always, Florida Georgia Line showed it knows how to bring the party— this time with Nelly. I refuse to accept that these new artists—and credible, talented artists in general—aren’t interesting to a large audience. Their songs have been downloaded and streamed billions of times. They have created the soundtrack to weddings and funerals, breakups and triumphs, falling in love and dancing with your children in the kitchen.
Carlos Ferreira CM O
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DEP UT Y EDITO R Tony Leone ART EDITO R Vanessa Cardoza C O M M ISSIO N IN G ED ITOR John Keough G RAP HIC DESIG N E R Carlos Ferreira SU B EDITO R Luke Lessring SALE S & M ARK E T ING Renee Carraggi
Saragrace Magre
Kathlyn Almeida
ED ITORIAL D ES I GNER
P H OTO G R A P H E R
Saragrace’s love for travel allows her to be inspired from a variety of cultures and gives her exposure to music and shows that are outside of American knowledge and custom.
Kathlyn is a multi faceted photographer who is always one step ahead, either buying tickets for shows on a hunch or finding a way to sneak into the front row.
Eduardo Canelas
Sara Everest
ILLUSTRATOR
J O UR N A L I ST
Hailing from Los Angles, Eduardo is an essential part of the team, just don’t call him Eddy, fair warning. He always has a million pens in his pocket, and claims they are for “corrections only, not autographs”.
Sara is able to to do that thing where she never has wo look at her fingers while typing, making her one of the fastest typists we seen.
CONTRIBUTORS Sara Everest Saragrace Magre Kathlyn Almeida Eduardo Canelas Carl Griffin Chris Roberts Cosmo Godfree Danny Turner David Stubbs Ed Walker Emma Garwood Fat Roland Finlay Milligan Grace Lake Heidegger Smith Jack Dangers Jools Stone
Kieran Wyatt Kris Needs Luke Sanger Mark Baker Martin James Mat Smith Neil Kulkarni Ngaire Ruth Patric Nicholson Paul Thompson Robin Bresnark Simon Price Stephen Bennett Stephen Dalton Steve Appleton Tom Violence Velimir Ilic Wedaeli Chiushi
PUBLISHED BY PAM COMMUNICATIONS LIMITED © SIXTY HERTZ 2019. No part of this magazine may be used or reproduced in any way without the prior written consent of the publisher. We may occasionally use material we believe has been placed in the public domain. Sometimes it is not possible to identify and contact the copyright holder. If you claim ownership of something published by us, we will be happy to make the correct acknowledgement. All information is believed to be correct at the time of publication and we cannot accept responsibility for any inaccuracies there may be in that information.
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THE EDTOR
DEPA RT MENTS
“These artists and musicians are changing the backbone of the music industry is”
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Christina
Dustin
FR O M NEW M EXI CO
FR O M NEW YO R K
Pop music has evolved alongside electronic music, and the interview with Cheat Codes was quite eye opening. Who knew that three DJ's could get together and create such interesting music, and have that music, eventhough it was electric heavy, enter the Top 100 on the Billboard Charts. Learning about Cheat Codes through the article made me question how simple pop music can be at it's core and if the human brain just needs a few melodies and then, bam, the song is stuck in our heads. The fact that they used to create songs for big headline celebrities is fasicanting. I wonder which of my favorite songs they have had a hand in. What's cool is how they and I guess you could say the Chainsmoker, bleh, and other DJ's, only recently entered the pop music scene and have really conquered the radio. After reading the interview I can distinctly hear the type of sound Cheat Codes makes and the unique melodies and rhytms they take for account. Due to the interview, now I'm looking forward to hearing more from them and their remixes because they are putting their own voice and creating their own take of someone else's song. I guess thats the beaty of pop E DM , is that generally the equation of one plus one equals three where a musician writes a song, and DJ remixes and through the combination of two conepts we arrive at a third meaning. My suggestion for you is showcase more of these artists that are redefining the backbone of the music industry and shine a light on these “ghost” producers that are very talented. Look up people such as Bonnie Mckee, who writes all of Katy Perry's music, or even Maxwell Martin, the writer and producer behind Britney Spear's discography.
I loved the subtle drag of Taylor Swift in the Calvin Harris article. That man I swear has evolved the pop genre eons. I mean where would the tropical house genre become synonamous with pop music without his contribution. Funk Wave Bounces Vol 1 was the album of the summer last year and how it revolutioned how pop music would sound after that. After that album every song that entered Top 100 either had inspirations from tropical E D M or completely ripped off Harris. This combination also helped push the pop genre out of it’s sad boy phase, where all the songs were too emotional if you catch my drift. You can only hear Love Yourself, by Justin Bieber, so many times before it just becomes part of the white noise in the world. Now I'm just ready to see where he will take the music genre. Additionally I'm interested in seeing if any DJ will try to make the jump into pop music and attempt to bridge a subsection of electronic with the hook, chorus, and bridge system of pop.
Seeb mixing at his Los Angles showing
Victor FR O M CA L I FO R NI A
Being new to this part of music, it was nice reading about how pop and electronic are the Gemini of music, identical in structure, but different in complexity I have loved pop music and anything top 40 always, and because of the song I Took A Pill In Ibiza, I realized the connection between the two genres. It clicked in my head when I realized that was playing on the radio was acutally a remix and that the original, although good, wasn't enough for the radio. It lacked the hook and that dance floor presence. Seeb transformed the song from a melochalonic mood to a dance floor filler. I'm excited to see what the next issue tackles and how I will learn from it's articles.
Kelly
PH OTO TA K E N BY R E M Y D E K LE I N
FR O M NEW H A M P S H I R E
“Pop and electronic are the Gemini of music, identical in structure, but different in complexity
I really enjoyed the previous editon of Sixty Hertz. Recently I've been to some festivals and had an experience where people were very exclsuvie in the worst sense. I was trying to enjoy the music and a certain group of people asked if I even knew who the DJ was or was part of the “culture” as they called it. The whole experience really pushed me away from electronic music as a whole. Seeing Calvin Harris on the cover of the last edition, made me pick it up and upon reading the magazine appeared to first be about pop music, but then I found myself reading the articles further and I realized that the magazine was truly about the subsection of electronic pop and I quickly felt that happiness I had felt that night before, lets call it the incident. I had interest in pop music and the magazine felt inclusive and invited people to enjoy music with them and not ask anything in return. Upon further research outside of reading the last edition I quickly realized that those who see the genre as exclusive aren't enjoying the music for themselves, but are in fact just trying gain power over people by boasting how engrained they are and how educated they are in the area. I challenge anyone reading to be inclusive and don't try to one up anyone. Last but not least, really just enjoy the music.
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YOUR
ZEDD
Zedd outside Royal in Boston, after performing.
WRIT TEN BY
Z I grew up listening to Deep Purple, Rainbow, Queen, King Crimson, Silverchair, Radiohead and that kind of stuff. . . far away from what I do today but still I’d consider those bands my main source of inspiration.
Neelu Mohaghegh
In a recent phone interview, he talked Skrillex, Selena and life as pop’s second-most-beloved EDM star. Excerpts from the conversation follow:
Neelu Mohaghegh (NM ): We’ll start with this—I have heard that you were classically trained on piano (so was I) and your parents are both musicians, what was that like for you growing up? When did the switch in genre happen for you and was it as an act of rebellion or were your parents supportive of it and it was more of just an experimental approach for you? Zedd (Z ): When both of your parents make music you just kind of grow into making music automatically. My parents taught me to play the piano when I was four. I hated taking piano lessons but loved making/writing my own music. I played classical music, Jazz, Fusion until I was about 12 years old. Then I started playing drums in a rock band with my brother. We transitioned into hardcore/metal over the years until I started making electronic music. I’ve always loved learning about new genres and trying out new things. Technically I’m still “new” to electronic music, considering I have made/played every other genre far longer thanI have been in electronic music.
Z At first performing at big festivals was very exciting. I suddenly got to play in front of ten thousands of people who appreciated my stuff. At this point I prefer playing my own concerts because I still get those thousands of people but they are all my own fans and totally know every word to every song. But most importantly, I get to bring in my own production and live show which to me is one of the best shows in electronic music-period. It’s impossible for me to deliver that exact same experience at a festival. NM How does it feel to stand among other young E D M artists like Martin Garrix, Nicky Romero, Alesso, Dillon Francis, Kygo, Madeon, Skrillex, and even Disclosure?
EDM GATEWAY
BE FOR E HE BE CAME a dance music powerhouse, Russian-German DJ/producer/artist Zedd was a drummer in a deathcore band. It’s not an uncommon trajectory: Fellow EDM superstar Skrillex, an early backer of his, started out in a punk band. And, like Skrillex, Zedd (born Anton Zaslavski) has become a crossover sensation, thanks to a handful of Top 40-minded collaborations with artists like Selena Gomez, Ariana Grande and Paramore’s Hayley Williams. Amiable and accessible and cute, Zedd, 26, is the perfect EDM gateway act. The ongoing tour in support of his sophomore disc “True Colors” (which lands at the UI C Pavilion on Thursday) is a lasers-and-pyro extravaganza meant to appeal to people who have never been to, or perhaps do not like, conventional EDM shows.
NM Once you made the big leagues, what was the EDM concert atmosphere like, and even more specifically, what was it like performing at Ultra?!
PH OTO TAK E N BY Z E D D
NM Who were/are some of your musical inspirations?
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FUNK I love the friendship in this scene. Madeon has been my support act for the first half of my True Colors Tour and now Dillon Francis is doing the second half. It’s amazing being on tour with friends and people who are inspiring to you. I haven’t really experience that kind of friendship / support back when I was making rock music. Z
N M Who was the best person you have collaborated with thus far? Z I don’t think there is a “best person” I’ve collaborated with; I’ve loved working with everyone. I absolutely love
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working with Rock Mafia. I wrote True Colors, Beautiful Now, Transmission and a few more with them. They are family and we’re musically on the same page which makes working with them a pure joy. NM Who would you want to collaborate with next? Z I would love to work with Adele, The Weeknd, Sam Smith, Ed Sheeran, Radiohead, Silverchair. . .so many incredible artists out there who inspire me. NM What was it like working with Jon Bellion?
I GREW UP LISTENING TO DEEP PURPLE, RAINBOW, QUEEN, KING CRIMSON, SILVERCHAIR, RADIOHEAD AND THAT KIND OF STUFF. . .
& JAZZ
Z It was amazing. I originally wanted Jon to sing two songs on my record but he said he could nail “Beautiful Now” so he recorded a little demo and indeed nailed it. I had him fly in to re-record a few things here and there and I’m super super happy he did this song. I love him on it.
I also met X Ambassadors at Billboards this summer and we have had Logic on our Verge Tour in the past, they’re both featured in your song “Transmission,” what made you think of their sounds/vocals for the song? Z Logic and I oddly enough connected through Twitter and I told him that I love his stuff. He asked me for a track so I sent him “Transmission” and left to get some dinner. When I got back he had already written and recorded his rap to it and I was blown away. As for X Ambassadors–I knew I needed an incredible singer to sing the melody in “Transmission” so I actually had about 5 different singers give it a shot and wanted to pick the very best. Sam absolutely killed it and so I obviously kept him on the record. NM
I love the fact that you first approached each song with the piano, then the EDM sound. How do you think this helped you find your musical sound? Z It just helps to put the focus on what it’s about: The melody, the chords and the lyrics. I find it much easier to write music on instruments because if you then love it—you know people will still love the song when in twenty years the sound could be potentially outdated. The Beatles don’t sound current anymore in terms of sound design/mix—but their music will forever be timeless and genius and I think that’s because their melodies, chord progressions, song strucNM
I FIND IT MUCH EASIER TO WRITE MUSIC ON INSTRUMENTS BECAUSE IF YOU THEN LOVE IT—YOU KNOW PEOPLE WILL STILL LOVE THE SONG WHEN IN 20 YEARS THE SOUND IS POTENTIALLY OUTDATED.
TRUE COLORS TOUR
Z EDD YOU R PER F ECT EDM G AT EWAY
Alessia Cara and Zeed posing for the Stay Single.
9.29 Vancouver, CA
9.30 Seattle, WA
10.7 San Francisco, CA
10.8 San Francisco, CA
10.12 Chicago, IL
10.17 Boston, MA
10.18 Boston, MA tures and lyrics are incredible. That’s why I write music on instruments. Would you ever consider doing a more tropical house take on your music as well? Like Kygo? Z I would say never. NM
Are you working on a new song right now or are you taking a break? Z I don’t really ever take breaks. I have written a couple song ideas since I have released True Colors and I’ll always keep writing new music. NM
What is your favorite song that you have written so far? Z I’m not sure if I can pick one. I think one song I’m very very proud of is “Spectrum“. I’m very proud to have written a chord progression that I can say: I have never ever heard in any other song in the world. NM
10.19 Philadelphia, PA
10.20 Philadelphia, PA
10.21 Washington, DC
10.24 Houston, TX
10.26 Dallas, TX —
11.1 Ciudad de Mexico, Mexico
11.3 Monterrey, Mexico
11.4 Zapopan, Mexico
NM I know that each song on your album, True Colors, is supposed to signify a color, what gave you the idea to follow that theme?
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I am a huge fan of the “Beautiful Now” music video, which color was that song supposed to represent? How was it filming the video and seeing the song come to life? Z Thank you very much. For the video of “Beautiful Now” I actually had to act for the first time ever. I have always appeared in my music videos but there’s never been a real role I had to play. It was a new territory for me but I was very excited to try it out. I’d definitely still consider me a terrible actor but you have to start somewhere. The song to me is very energetic and explosive, to me I gave the song the color “magenta” which feels full of youth, and really extreme and energetic to me. NM
BUT ONCE, A FEW YEARS AGO, I ACTUALLY SAID “WHAT’S UP LA” WHILE I WAS PLAYING IN NEW YORK AND THAT WAS PRETTY MUCH THE WORST CASE SCENARIO OF WHAT ONE CAN SAY ON THE MIC IN NEW YORK Z Half way through writing my album I realized how different all the songs sounded from each other. I thought it would be a cool concept for my album for every song to continue sounding entirely different. So I kind of forced myself to find ways to make the songs sound different and feel different.
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All this talk about colors, which is your favorite color, really? Z My favorite color is teal. NM
NM Now, I am currently working with a friend to produce a song, he made the track, and I am doing the vocals and we are both very excited, would you have any suggestions or type of advice when it comes to developing a sound? Z Try to be unique. Try to be you. It’s always great to gain inspiration from others you love but don’t try to copy them. Try for them to copy you. That’s how you get your own sound. NM When you are composing, how do you know what voice you are looking for? You seem to always pick the perfect vocals for your tracks. Z Sometimes I immediately know what kind of vocal it is supposed to be (male or female / breathy or sharp voice) and sometimes it’s a matter of trying many many singers out until you find the perfect puzzle piece. I never settle for less than amazing when it comes to vocalists. NM Of course, how is the True Colors Tour going? What has the experience been so far? Favorite city? Z The True Colors Tour has been incredible. Reading the feedback from fans it
seems like this is one of the best shows anyone has ever seen. I’m extremely proud of it and I can honestly say I believe it’s the most spectacular show in electronic music right now. NM Should we expect any new projects in the immediate future? Z Nothing I could say as of now. But as you probably know, I’m always working on things. NM Where is a venue you really want to perform at? Z Well, if you had asked this just a week ago I would have said “Madison Square Garden” but I finally got to play there and it was an incredible and emotional feeling. I’m very proud of everyone involved and how much we have achieved and such little time. NM What is the most ridiculous thing you have done on stage and what is the one most ridiculous thing you wish you could do on stage? Z To be honest I’m pretty focused on stage so I never really have time to do ridiculous things. But once, a few years ago, I actually said “What’s up LA” while I was playing in New York and that was pretty much the worst case scenario of what one can say on the mic in New York. I felt terrible but I think my fans
BE UNIQUE
Z EDD YOU R PER F ECT EDM G AT EWAY
Zedd performing at Club at Ivy during his True Colors Tour.
PHOTO TAKEN BY ZEDD
forgave me. When you play three hundred shows a year, at some point you’re gonna fuck up. NM You said in a previous interview once that True Colors was supposed to be an “once-in-a-lifetime musical adventure”. You wanted it to be a multisensory experience where “people [will] feel transported to another place for two hours, and for each song feel like it’s taking you into another world”. I think that is incredible and really takes music to another level of relatedness between sound and the person him/herself. You are also mentioned you listened to artists from outside of the electronic music world domain to get your inspiration for your album— which artists were those specifically? Z Well, the same artists I used to listen to when I was younger; Queen, King Crimson, Silverchair, Genesis. . .all those types of artist have inspired my album big time. §
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PHOTO TA K EN BY R EMYDEK L EIN
F EAT U R E
R V how rave music
and the world
Dutch DJ Armin van Buuren headlining at the Flying Dutchman Festival in Amsterdam, Hardwell
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VE WR I T T EN BY
Simon Reynolds P H OTO GR A P H Y BY
Remy De Klein
MAS S IV E GAT HER ING S O F dancing youths dressed in garish freakadelic clothes? DJs treated like rock stars? Teenagers dropping dead from druggy excess? Didn’t this all happen once already? But the phenomenon isn’t so much deja vu as a rebranding coup. What were once called “raves” are now termed “festivals”; EDM is what we used to know by the name of techno.
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Even the drugs have been rebranded: “molly,” the big new chemical craze, is just ecstasy in powder form (and reputedly purer and stronger) as opposed to pills. The main difference between then and now is the sheer scale of the phenomenon. Earlier this summer Electric Daisy Carnival (EDC ), the most famous of the new wave of whateveryou-do-don’t-call-them-raves, drew 320,000 people to Las Vegas Motor Speedway over the course of three days. The crowds are lured to EDC and to similar dance-fests like Ultra, Electric Zoo, and IDentity not just by the headliner-piled-upon headliner bills of superstar DJs but by the no-expense spared spectacle of LED graphics, projection mapping and other cutting edge visual technology. Why did it take so long—20 years— for techno-rave to conquer the American mainstream? Commentators can compare the delay to the 15-year gap between Never Mind the Bollocks and Nevermind: 1991 as the Year Punk Broke America. But in both cases that’s a simplistic view of history: the Clash were stars in America by 1980 along with other New Wave acts, and likewise electronic dance music made a series of incursions into the US pop charts over the last two decades, only to be returned each time to the underground scene. IN T H E E AR LY 9 0 'S, K L F and C&C Music Factory, Deelite and Crystal Waters took house into the Billboard Top 40, while raves both illegal and commercial sprouted on the east and west coasts— an escalation that climaxed with 1993’s Rave America, which drew 17,000 to the Californian amusement park Knots Berry Farm. Then came a lull until the electronica buzz of 1997, when MTV threw its weight behind the likes of the Prodigy, the Chemical Brothers, and Underworld. In the immediate years that followed, Fatboy Slim and Moby achieved ubiquity in TV commercials and movie soundtracks, while trance music of the fluffy Paul Van Dyk/Paul Oakenfold type spurred a resurgence of raves in southern California, which by the turn of the millennium reached the twenty to fourty thousand range.
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draw a line between EDM today and 90s rave.
Once again, the momentum dissipated. Radio remained hostile to electronic dance music unless it had a conventional pop song structure and vocals (as with the Prodigy’s punkrave or Madonna’s coopting of trance on Ray of Light ). Major labels couldn’t work out how to develop electronic acts into albums-selling career artists. The next downturn for electronic music was drastic and for a while seemed terminal. Thanks to new-metal and cool-hair bands like the Strokes and the White Stripes, rock was in the ascendant again; guitars once more sold more than turntables, a reversal of how things were trending in the 90’s. In California, always America’s rave stronghold, large-scale parties all but disappeared, while all across the country, clubs moved to smaller premises and weekly events went monthly. The period from
2004 and 2005 was the nadir: some American DJs even emigrated to Berlin, where the work prospects were better. How did the US electronic dance scene claw its way back? Basically, by doing its best to shed the word “rave” and all its associations: drugged-up kids slumped on dancefloors, hospitalisations, and the statistically rare but reputation-tarnishing death. Repeatedly through the 90’s, governments at the state and city level threw a party for friends in their own loft apartment, with no paid admission and the DJing performed by the host, could find themselves ticketed for a $10,000 fine. In New Orleans, laws originally drafted to close down crack houses were used against raves and clubs where drug taking was taking place, regardless of whether the promoter or owner was involved in selling the substances. “The association of techno with ecstasy, we seriously had to overcome that stigma,” says Gary Richards of the LA-based promotions company Hard Events. “If you approach a venue owner or local authority for permits and you use the word ‘rave’, your business is doomed”. Richards went further than most, actually banning from his Hard Festivals such rave-era “silly stuff” as glow-sticks, dummies, and cuddly toys.
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PH OTO TAK E N BY RE M Y D E K L E I N
HOW R AV E MU SIC C ONQUER ED T HE WOR L D
Dutch DJ Armin van Buuren from inside his DJ stand
T HE WO R D FE ST I VA L I TS E L F represents an attempt by promoters to draw line between today’s E D M and 90’s rave. From bluegrass and folk to indie and heavy metal, music festivals take place all over the US. Some have their own problems with excessive drug/alcohol use and rowdy, mob-like behaviour (remember the arson and riots at Woodstock in 1999?). But festivals don’t have the media stigma or face the punitive legislation and policing that raves do. Older and shrewder by the late 2000’s, the early 90’s pioneers involved in Hard Events and Insomniac (the company behind Electric Daisy Carnival) learned how to work with the system, going through the bureaucratic hoops required to get permits, and providing the level of intensive security, entrance searches and overall safety provisions that would give political cover to their local government enablers. In contrast with the 90’s ethos of throwing raves in exotic and outof-the-way places such as abandoned buildings, remote farms, and desert wilderness, promoters deliberately sought out in plain sight sites: ultramainstream venues like sports stadiums and motor sports courses. Big breakthroughs came with the 2010 Electric Daisy Carnival, for which Insomniac’s Pasquale Rotella secured the Los Angeles Memorial Coliseum: an iconic football stadium that is now home to the USC Trojans and also hosted the Olympics. Yet this moment of crossover triumph for the resurgent E D M movement turned to catastrophe: Insomniac’s bid for respectability was dealt a near-fatal blow with the ecstasy-related death of a 15 year old girl who somehow managed to bypass the Electric Daisy’s age restrictions and get into the event. The outcry that ensued forced EDC out of Los Angeles altogether. Insomniac now stage the Carnival in Las Vegas, a much more congenial and permissive environment that has lately become the Ibiza of North America, a place where star DJs like Tiesto have residencies. “I would never want our scene to grow out of something tragic,” says Rotella. “But all that media attention was something that opened people’s eyes to how big this scene was getting. It did,
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I believe, assist in the explosion. Because we were pulling 130,000 people and no one knew. “He points out that before the Coliseum, there were no other dance festivals in the US on anything like that scale. Now there’s half a dozen. Whether or not the 2010 Electric Daisy Carnival really proves there’s no such thing as bad publicity, it’s equally true that the event showed that the link between EDM and drugs still existed. Because it wasn’t just one unlucky teenager. According to the LA Times, “about 120 [EDC ] attendees were taken to hospitals, mostly for drug intoxication”. Madonna was recently lambasted for coming onstage at Ultra in Miami and asking the EDM horde: “how many people have seen Molly?” With casuistic adroitness she subsequently made out that she wasn’t really referring to the popular powdered form of MDMA but to the dance track Have You Seen Molly? Except that tune is blatantly a drug-is-the-love song in the 90’s rave tradition of Ebeneezer Goode, Let Me Be Your Fantasy and Sesame’s Treet: it features a GPS -style robot-woman saying: “Please help me find Molly/She makes my life happier, more exciting/She makes me want to dance”. “Molly is short for ‘molecule’,” explains Nathan Messer of DanceSafe, an organization that provides guidance and pill-testing at raves all across North America. “It’s sold in
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its dance troupes whose costumes are pitched midway between harlequin and hooker. “It’s about giving people that fantasy; that storybook experience. I want to create celebrations. EDC is like New Year’s Eve; like Mardi Gras”. Rotella says he has got no interest in becoming a concert promoter, putting on events where big name performers are the main draw. “You can see the big DJs in clubs any time. We are doing ‘destination festivals’”. But Rotella also stresses the role played by the audience: “I like to say our headliners are the fans. They get dressed up”.
sachets or baggies. Because pressed pills had gotten so diluted with adulterants, everybody wants the powder”. Molly’s reputation for purity and strength was deserved for a long while, but inevitably dealers have started to cut the powder with other substances.
PH OTO TAK E N BY RE M Y D E K L E I N
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H OW EV ER DETERMINED and stringent promoters might be in their attempts to prevent drugs getting into their events, supply tends to find a way to meet up with demand. According to Messer, the super-size festivals have their own special problems when it comes to drug safety. On the one hand, kids buy dubious substances from dealers they don’t know and are unlikely to see again given the size of the venue. On the other, there are no pill-testing facilities: promoters won’t have anything to do with outfits such as DanceSafe, because that would be an admission problem still exist, opening them to the risk of permits being denied or having equipment confiscated. “We provide Wonderland. You don’t need drugs,” insists Rotella. He talks up the “experience” aspect of Electric Daisy Carnival, from its dazzling barrage of state-of-the-art lighting to
AND HOW ! AT Electric Daisy carnival and similar dance festivals, the look has evolved from the child-like “candy raver” of the 1990’s, with their pigtails and cuddly toys and pacifiers (dummies), to a slick and sexified yet also kitschy-surreal image midway between Venice Beach and Cirque Du Soleil, Willy Wonka and a Gay Pride parade: girls in Daisy Dukes and bikini tops (or even bare breasts daubed in glittery body paint) but who also wear tutus, giant furry boots in turquoise and hot pink, and fairy wings. What the EDC ravers most recall are the “nutbags” and “mentalists” who flocked to Gatecrasher, the Sheffield club that was the focus of the trance boom of the late 90s. Not only is the music they dance to similar (a rehashmash of trance, house and electro) but the style is a similar mix of child-like, cyberdelic-futurist, and fancy dress. Right from the early days, there’s always been a carnivalesque side to rave culture, from the free party sound systems with names like Circus Warp to the commercial UK raves with their bouncy castles, gyroscope rides, and merry-go-rounds. Clubs, likewise, featured all sorts of eye-candy, from lasers and intelligent lighting to trip-tastic projections of cyber-kitsch graphics. The flicker and dazzle was conducive to hallucinatory drugs and the hi-tech fun ‘n’ frolics found the perfect interzone between futurism and regression to childhood. The new electronic dance festivals in America have taken this side of rave to the next level.
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Electric Daisy Carnival in 2010
DAF T P U NK’S S E T AT the Coachella festival in 2006, where they performed inside a huge glowing pyramid, is often cited as a turning point. Soon performers like Deadmau5 were pouring as much effort and money into panels and beatsynchronised animated graphics as they did into their own music. What’s different about this new breed of audio-visual entertainer is that they offer are “custom-branded visuals predesigned to fit specific songs”. So says Drew Best, a prime mover in the US dubstep scene with his Los Angeles club/label Smog, but also the motiongraphics designer behind the fledgling company Pattern & Noise. In the old days, Best explains, what a VJ (video jockey) or lighting director did was provide improvised accompaniment to the DJ’s set. But nowadays Deadmau5 will get a designer such as Best, who worked on the former’s recent tour, to create “Pacman-type ghosts” to go with the track Ghosts ‘N’ Stuff or a “Tronstyle” factory with clanking pistons to accompany Professional Griefers.
on the scene are engaged in fierce competition to out-do each other. Skrillex’s Skrill Cell combined projection mapping and motion capture. “Skrillex wore a big suit and he had CG characters rigged to it, these twenty foot monsters on a giant wall behind him,” explains Best. “The monsters would match Skrillex’s every movement as he deejayed onstage”. This A/V glitz-blitz costs a lot, but then artists at the Deadmau5 level earn a lot: as much as $1m for a festival appearance, while hardest gigging man in EDM Skrillex is reportedly worth $15m. With day tickets selling at around $125 and well over 300,000 attending over three days, the Las Vegas EDC must have grossed in the region of $40m. The big money is attracting even bigger money: the mogul Robert FX Sillerman declared his intent to spend $1 billion acquiring T H E L EA D I N G P E R FO R M E R S EDM
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EA RLIER TH IS Y EA R Deadmau5 incited a furore with his candid admission that everybody at his level basically presses “play” and his assertion that the true artistry comes into play in the recording studio beforehand, not on the stage. In other words, he’s a producer who chooses to publicly represent his sound in person, but not a DJ in the traditional sense: a selector who responds to the mood of the crowd. EDM today has come a long way from the early days of house and techno, when sound was privileged over vision, an ethos enshrined in the title of the 1992 Madhouse compilation. A Basement, a Red Light, and a Feeling. In those murky, atmospheric clubs, the deejay booth was often tucked away in a corner rather than placed up on a stage: dancers weren’t meant to all be looking in one direction, they were meant to get lost in music, and in the collective intimacy of the dancefloor . While festivals like Electric Daisy Carnival have amplified the fantasy and fancy dress side of 90’s rave, other sectors in the resurgent scene have gone in the opposite direction, concentrating on the music. Hard Festival’s Richards wanted
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Get Lost
W&W Mainstage Amsterdam Music Festival
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companies in the EDM field, while Live Nation, America’s leading concert promotions company, recently purchased outright Hard Events. The increasingly bread-head and circus-like aspects of EDM have provoked a backlash from those who feel dance culture is swapping underground intimacy in favour of soul-less bombast that stuns and stupefies audiences into slack-jawed submission. The Wall Street Journal, of all places, recently railed against “The Dumbing Down of Electronic Dance Music”. Long time west coast rave watcher Dennis Romero penned a caustic verdict for LA Weekly on this June’s Vegas EDC : “A press-play parade of millionaires going through the motions”. DanceSafe’s Messer, a veteran of the idealistic PLUR (peace, love, unity, respect) oriented rave underground of the 90’s, complains that
the dance festivals offer a “packaged, containerised experience...These events are all about raging hard, getting as fucked up as you can. Not even about the dancing, just being present in face of a the giant extravaganza”.
to lose the “goofy fashion” side of rave that EDC revels in. “Why do we have to dress up like idiots to listen to this music? All those girls in the furry boots, they look like Clydesdale horses!” As “hard” suggests, Richards presents electronic music as modern rock: an old spirit encased in new digital flesh. It’s a strategy he pursued through the record industry for years. First he worked at Rick Rubin’s American label, at a time circa 1992 when the Def Jam co-founder was briefly convinced that techno was the new punk, or the new hip hop: a revolution waiting to take the country by storm. Then Richards ran his own major label imprint 1500 Records. But just like with his stint at American, he struggled to find a way to sell electronic music through the conventional rock channels. By 2005, that was becoming irrelevant, as the industry was struggling to sell records in any genre. So with perfect timing, Richards formed Hard, a live promotions company, catching the rising tide of live performances and festivals. And it’s through the live experience something that can’t be shared or bookmarked for later listening, that you have to be present for in real-time that EDM has really achieved lift-off. Even artists who sell a goodly number of MP3s and make an impression on the Billboard Top 40, such as Skrillex, make the bulk of their income from live shows. AS MUCH AS E DMS SPREA D owes a huge deal to the internet and the circulation of DJ mixes and YouTubed tracks via social media and message boards, what’s striking about the rise of the leading artists is how much it depends on the old-fashioned rock biz grind of touring.
Blood Company, the management team behind Skrillex, specialise in hardcore metal bands such as Atreyu and Revoker. “They used the same strategy with Skrillex, which is putting the band on a bus and going to every town in America,” says Drew Best. Last autumn, Skrillex’s two-month Mothership tour played 55 dates across the US. “He took my partner at Smog, the DJ and producer 12th Planet, with him and they were stopping at middle-class American cities and college towns that aren’t even on the radar of your electronic booking agents, whose typical approach is to fly artists such as the Chemical Brothers in to the major cities plus a couple of pre-existing festivals”. In some ways it’s odd that no one thought to try this kind of grass-roots, hard-slog approach to breaking electronic artists before. “Performers such as Skrillex are incredibly efficient touring operations compared to rock bands, “says Matt Adell of Beatport, the online music retailer that’s something like the deejay’s equivalent to iTunes. “It’s less expensive than a rock group because there’s just one performer, there’s much less gear and it’s easier to set up because there’s no live microphones. So the support team required is so much smaller”. Hoping to retrace the path to success taken by Skrillex, Blood
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Company now have several other electronic acts on their roster, including American dubstep artists the Juggernaut and J Rabbit. The internet helped to obliterate the time-lag that always used to hamper the American outposts of UK-based scenes like jungle. Because of the dubplate system, whereby the leading British drum & bass DJs played the latest sounds months before their official release, by the time American deejays got hold of the tracks as expensive imports, the UK scene was already six months into the future. But dubstep, as the first fully networked dance scene, is globally synchronized: sound-files are traded more freely and new tracks gets edited out of DJ mixes on pirate radio and posted as YouTube by fans. BY 2007, N OT O N LY was dubstep accessible in a way that Jungle, UK garage and Grime had never been, but the music itself was getting more accessible: increasingly in your face, full-on, and hard-riffing. In its formative years, dubstep had been a connoisseur’s sound: deep and dark, moody and meditational, appealing to an audience largely composed of former junglists and 90’s-rave veterans. Gradually the sound gathered younger recruits, proving particularly popular with students. DJs such as Skream and Plastician found themselves playing bigger halls and, consciously or unconsciously, started gearing both their sets and their own productions to what would make a big crowd go nuts. Some observers say the ban on
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Jack Ü performing alongside Skrillex at Tomorowland 2015
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smoking in clubs played its role: with a sly, discreet spliff no longer an option, punters switched to pills and energy levels accordingly rose. Whatever the case, dubstep transformed into a big-room, peak hour sound: proper rave music. The Massive sound basically made dubstep massive in the US. A key moment was another widely circulated mix, this time created by the Vancouver-based deejay Excision for the 2008 Shambalaya festival. “Excision isolated the most aggressive, industrial sounding tracks around,” says Best. “Nothing but the hardest dubstep. People here ate that up”. MEA NW HILE, ORIGINA L dubstep believers were recoiling from the rowdy, macho atmosphere that had descended on the
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scene. “Brostep” was the derisive term coined to discourage the masculinist tendency, mock it out of existence. According to Best, “bro” brings to mind steroid-stacked frat boys and truck-driving dudes into Monster Energy drinks. But the term began to be embraced as a positive identity. “I’ve been sent demo tracks by people who say: ‘I make brostep.’” Ultimately dubstep’s drift towards harder-and-crazier sounds proved unstoppable. In the UK, many of the scene’s guardians refused to go along with it and dispersed into the milder, semi-experimental or house-ified realms of “postdubstep”. But in America, outfits like Smog embraced the new direction. For Best, dubstep was moving in to claim the space abandoned by rock, through its retreat during the 2000’s into
PHOTO TA K EN BY R EMYDEK L EIN
either antiquarian retro irrelevance or the non-visceral gentility of indie, all wordsmith craft and over-embellished arrangements. That space was the perennial demand for a tough, aggressive but forward-looking sound for the release of pent-up frustration. Choosing venues for their increasingly frequent and well-attended dubstep events, Smog deliberately gravitated to Los Angeles’ rock’n’roll venues. “Before I’d done drum’n’bass nights and whenever we’d booked into anywhere polished, it always ended in flames. Bathrooms got trashed, mirrors had tags etched into them. When we started doing Smog, it was same kind of aggressive crowd, Ultimately dubstep’s drift towards harder-and-crazier sounds proved unstoppable. In the UK, many of the scene’s guardians refused to go along with it and dispersed into the milder, semi-experimental or houseified realms of “post-dubstep”. But in America, outfits like Smog embraced the new direction. For Best, dubstep was moving in to claim the space abandoned by rock, through its retreat during the 2000’s into either antiquarian retro irrelevance or the non-visceral gentility of indie, all wordsmith craft and over-embellished arrangements. That space was the perennial demand for a tough, aggressive but forwardlooking sound for the release of pentup frustration. Choosing venues for their more increasingly frequent and well-attended dubstep events, Smog deliberately gravitated to Los Angeles’s rock’n’roll venues. “Before I’d done drum’n’bass nights and whenever we’d booked into anywhere polished, it always ended in flames. Bathrooms got trashed, mirrors had tags etched into them. When we started doing Smog, it was same kind of aggressive crowd, so we avoided fancy nights with a dress code and
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“ Something your parents are going to hate”
bottle service and went for dark, gritty basement bars. Then a punk rock club called the Echo hooked up with us. Next thing you know at our Smog nights, there’s children moshing and deejays stage-diving”. NU -SKO OL D U BST EP has become a focus point in a forgenerational identity in America, says Best. “The mid-range bass sound just captured the attention of young people. It’s like that highpitched, aggravating sound of a guitar solo in the 70’s. Something your parents are going to hate”. A video on YouTube, Elders React to Dubstep, plays on this idea: various old folk, exposed to a barrage of bass-screech, offer comments such as “incomprehensible, like Jackass in a bottle”, and, revealingly, “it make me feel like the future is now”. They
also suggest genre names for the music, one of which is even better than brostep: metalla-purge. Although not a dubstep artist per se, Skrillex incorporates elements from the genre into his own eclectic brand of high energy electrodance. (The name Skrillex could almost be onomatopoeia for brostep’s shredded, twisting bass lines.) According to Best, Skrillex attended some of the early Smog nights and noticed the rock-of-the-future vibe, which resonated with his own background as the singer in the screamo band From First to Last. “In America now, Skrillex is the biggest thing since Nirvana,” says Best. “You’re witnessing a whole new cultural revolution happening”. He thinks the rocktronica tendency is set to intensify with the emergence of artists like Knife Party (two former members of Pendulum, the Australian outfit who turned drum’n’bass into a new form of arena rock) and Mosquito (“Daft Punk meets Prodigy meets Skrillex”). Right now the EDM scene is an uneasy coalition between the slamming rocktronica of Skrillex and Bassnectar and the fluffy feel-good trance-house of DJs like Avicii, Kaskade, Swedish House Mafia, and Steve Aoki. On one side, there’s Hard’s Gary Richards who wants to push electronic music even further away from rave’s disreputable and daft past. On the other, there’s Electric Daisy Carnival, which has preserved not just the rave’s hands in the air euphoria but some of it’s own subcultural ritual aspects too. § SI X T Y HE RT Z .C OM
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Paola Gonzalez, 23, dancing to Major Lazer’s set at Marina Hemingway.
and Major Lazer bring their brand of music to Cuba
WRIT TEN BY:
Joe Coscarelli PH OTO GRAP H Y BY:
Lisette Poole
HAVANA—“I K NOW you’ve been waiting a long time for a party like this,” the DJ and producer Diplo called out to a sea of pulsating young Cubans here on Sunday evening, during a free concert by his Caribbean-influenced electronic group, Major Lazer. The spectacle at a waterfront plaza known as the José Martí Anti-Imperialist Platform, in front of the newly established United States Embassy, was remarkable: a seemingly endless crowd of an estimated 450,000 to a half-million stylish locals, largely teenagers, bouncing, dancing and roaring to amped-up electronic dance music, or EDM. This was the first concert in Cuba by a major pop act from the United
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States since the reinstatement of diplomatic relations between the two countries in December 2014. (Pop acts very rarely made it to Cuba during the embargo; the last large-scale concert was by the band Audioslave in 2005.) IT N OTA BLY FE AT UR E D a youth-oriented genre. EDM is a rising trend among Cubans after trickling down from a boom in the United States and Europe—and a globe-trotting star who’d been quietly plotting his way here for fourteen months. The show was also governmentapproved, and therefore largely depoliticized, its restrictions demonstrating the continuing tension between life on this island for the past half-century and the Cuban culture of the future. “It’s the very first time I’ve seen my generation so happy,” said Robin Pedraja, 28, the creative director of Vitar, an independent online culture magazine. The concert was the culmination of a weekend in Havana for Major Lazer,
FA BIEN PISA NI, A F OUNDER of Musicabana Foundation, a Cuban-American group that helped organize the show with assistance and approval from the state-run Cuban Institute of Music, worked to bring Major Lazer for the opening event because “I didn’t want
“It’s the very first time I have seen my generation so happy...” 26
Walshy Fire, Diplo, and Jillionaire performing at a party at Marina Hemingway on Saturday in Havana.
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which also includes the DJs and producers Walshy Fire (from Jamaica) and Jillionaire (from Trinidad) and is best known for its international megahit “Lean On”. The trip was “kind of a lofty idea,” Diplo said, “because I didn’t think these kids even knew our music”. Unlike the presumably pan-generational concert in Havana by the Rolling Stones later this month—days after President Obama becomes the first American president to visit eighty eight years—this trip was very much oriented to youth culture. The visit had smaller parties and impromptu DJ sets, along with a government-organized news conference. There was also a cultural-exchange panel—required for American artists playing in Cuba—with aspiring local producers and electronic musicians, who asked detailed questions about software, distribution and mixing and mastering techniques.
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it to have a nostalgic act,” he said. “I’m not interested in Havana from the 50’s— I’m interested in Havana in 2050”. For his group, the concert was a momentum building opening event before its international music festival in Havana in May. Last month, Diplo won two Grammy Awards for his work with Jack Ü, before setting off for Cuba, one of the few Caribbean nations where Major Lazer, with its reggaeton and dancehall influences, had yet to perform. “The money DJs make is obnoxious and it’s not going to be around forever,” Diplo said in his room at Hotel Nacional, overlooking the growing crowd about an hour before he took the stage. “I’m accepted, so I get those Vegas residencies,” he said of the lucrative nightclub gigs offered to EDM stars. “But I didn’t start making music to do those residencies. I started making music to produce cool things like this”. W IT H DIP LO ’S INF LU ENC E reaching new heights, the embargo at its most relaxed in a half-century and travel to Cuba becoming increasingly accessible, Major Lazer began exploring a concert in Havana over a year ago.
PHOTO TAKEN BY LISETTE POOLE
Being first was important to the group. “Other people were thinking about doing shows so we kind of expedited it,” Diplo said. “It’s not going to mean as much after this”. (He added of the Rolling Stones, “They’re English—they could’ve been coming here for years”.)
AT O NE LAT E - N I G H T DA N C E party on Saturday away from the city center— where more than 2,000 people danced to remixes of Drake and the Weeknd under an ornate tree-fort structure—a guest DJ set from Jillionaire drew chants of “Dee-plo! Dee-plo! Dee-plo!,” although he was not present. Jillionaire could only laugh. “Come see Diplo tomorrow,” Jillionaire told the crowd before playing “Lean On”. Onstage at the plaza, Diplo waved a giant Cuban flag and was mirrored in the audience by fans who held up smaller American and Cuban flags— outnumbered only by those bearing the globelike logo for Major Lazer. Yet the show brushed up against state control for a moment as Major Lazer was barred from welcoming unapproved Cuban musicians; including the rapper Yotuel Romero of the influential Latin rap group Orishas— onstage as surprise guests. Using additional acts “wasn’t part of the contract,” Mr. Pisani said.
Diplo performing on Sunday with Major Lazer at the José Martí AntiImperialist Platform.
PH OTOS TA K E N BY LI SE T T E P O OL E
M AJO R LAZ ER ’S M ANAG EMENT team and Mr. Pisani worked to stir up interest with young people in Cuba by placing Major Lazer’s work on what is known as el paquete semanal, or the weekly package, a hand-to-hand digital distribution service that spreads bootlegs of songs, YouTube videos, news, movies
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and TV shows around the country via hard drives and USB hard drives. “I paid them to put the music there with a vision for creating an audience for this concert,” Mr. Pisani said. (Diplo referred to the tactic as “inception”.) If the reaction from those in Havana before the concert was any indication, the promotion worked. “Hey, DJ!” street vendors yelled at Diplo at a popular flea market for tourists, encouraging him to browse their piles of vinyl records. Giggling locals of all ages politely requested selfies with group members (and even their staffers), along with autographs on local newspaper articles about Major Lazer. “El paquete—I saw him there, on the Grammys,” one middle-aged woman said in Spanish after posing for a photo.
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Backup dancers along with other members of the Major Lazer crew during an after-party at Fรกbrica de Arte Cubano.
PH OTOS TA K E N BY LI SE T T E P O OL E
Mr. Pisani noted after the concert that Cuban officials “were watching us—it’s about building trust”. “They are careful, because when you give the mike to a guy in front of 400,000 people. . . ” Mr. Pisani, 44, went on before trailing off. “They are maybe anxious, but they understand it’s important. As public servants, they have a mission to provide entertainment to that generation; to those kids who have a different expectation of life than my generation or themselves”. Orlando Vistel Columbié, president of the Cuban Institute of Music, said in Spanish after the show that Major Lazer had “established a very respectful relationship with the Cuban public and has been really respectful toward Caribbean roots in general”. Major Lazer did its part to make sure the show went smoothly. Although the US Treasury Department recently announced loosened regulations that allow American musicians to profit from musical events in Cuba, the group paid its own way, with representatives estimating costs at around $150,000 for equipment and travel for a team of about two dozen. The Cuban Institute of Music provided the venue, along with medical, fire and security services. SUCH A L AR GE -SC A LE undertaking was made possible partly by the financial and social capital earned by Diplo in recent years. Known at first as an underground D.J. and party giver with
a penchant for borrowing esoteric world sounds and rhythms, he has since become a go-to hit maker for stars like Madonna, Beyoncé and Justin Bieber—the consummate outsider turned insider. Ahead of the headlining event, Diplo acknowledged his reputation as “that special gringo” and reflected on the popularity of EDM in a place where traditional music has been passed down through generations due to the narrow channels for discovery. “Of course they’re going to be into electronic music—it’s so accessible,” he said of young people with more access to the Internet, adding that this modern incarnation of dance music is not politicized. “Major Lazer is just the quintessential, easy-enough group to make it make some sense”. “This is the beginning—we’re writing the story right now for these kids,” Diplo added. “It’s going to be different from here on out”. §
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The dancer Sara Bivens warmed up backstage.
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