It was certainly an all-star line-up that gathered in the ballroom. At one end of the panel sat Richie Hawtin, a figure in dance music who seems at odds with all things Vegas. That night, though, he was set to play a rare Sin City show at Drai’s After Hours, an infamous club on the Strip. At EDC on Saturday night, he was bringing his ‘Enter’ stage to the cosmicMEADOW with Magda, Gaiser, Loco Dice and Dubfire (sadly, those desert winds called it short).
Next to Hawtin sat Steve Angello in shorts and backwards-baseball cap. Friday night at EDC was his chance to curate a stage, bringing his Size Matters family including Thomas Gold and AN21 & Max Vangeli. Next on the panel was Kaskade, who couldn’t have been more mellow throughout the discussion (the thongs added to the San Fran Zen vibe). Finally at the far end: Swedish big-room house specialists Rebecca & Fiona and trance gurus Above & Beyond. The moderator was L.A. radio DJ Jason Bentley. Here’s how it went.
Jason Bentley, moderator: We’ve spoken to event promoters, managers, agents, publicists, new media, record labels, and it’s this whole economy that’s based on you [points to panel] and what you do. This is the first time we’re speaking with artists: the creators. It’s really important what you think about everything that’s going on. I’d love for anyone to chime in on what’s going on in the U.S. right now.
Kaskade: To me, it’s just fascinating just to watch everything that’s been going on. I grew up listening to and loving this music, but as an American kid, I thought it was more of a European thing. It was happening in Chicago and Detroit, the hot-spots, but to see where it’s at now is mind-boggling really. I’m still amazed when I go to EDC.
Jason Bentley, moderator: Richie, I’m curious about your take on it.
Richie Hawtin: Yeah, I’ve been in the scene 25 years, and it’s incredible how vibrant it is right now. In some ways it’s a little bit scary. We spent the last 25 years believing in what we do, and building this. So, it had to get to this point. But the challenge now is to make sure it doesn’t slip out of our fingers. Keep it in control.
Jason Bentley, moderator: Can you compare it to anything you’ve seen before? Any waves of interest?
Richie Hawtin: Sometimes it reminds me of the early ‘90s in California. The whole rave scene. I was actually on a bus tour around 1991. It was the band I was in, Cybersonic, Moby and The Prodigy. It was the first electronic rave bus tour across America.
At that moment, it looked like it was going to pop. But it didn’t. Things happened in L.A. and other places with people not understanding the music fully. That was probably the right thing to happen then. It wasn’t ready. I guess what I’m trying to say is now the people behind the scenes have matured and if it had happened 20 years ago, we would’ve lost control of it. Now we can – I don’t want to say ‘take it to the masses’, ‘cause I don’t believe it should go to the masses – but go to a wider field.
Jono, Above & Beyond: “There’s a danger now that artists will evolve into businessmen.”Jason Bentley, moderator: I want to throw the question down to Above & Beyond. You guys have done really well on your own terms. You recently had three sold out nights at The Shrine in Los Angeles. But your success is off the grid. Do you think it’s important for you to be in the bubble of that scene?
Tony McGuinness, Above & Beyond: I remember the time when you just went to clubs to look at the girls. You never worried about the DJ. I miss that. [Laughter]. What we’re trying to do is be like a band, actually. The fact that we make electronic music is just the way it’s come together.
We’re about writing songs and bringing that to the audience, and the club side is just one side to what we do. So, the whole explosion of EDM now is just something the mainstream media has noticed. We’ve been coming to the States since 2002 doing the same kind of thing as now. But in the last three years it has got bigger quickly.
Features
Jason Bentley, moderator: Rebecca & Fiona, you
guys are new to the States. You’re from Sweden and you have a single out
on Ultra. What’s your perspective on the explosion in the U.S., coming
from Europe?
Rebecca: It’s been amazing. People love house music and they’re really excited about us being girls as well. There’s so many guys usually you can’t even see the girls.
Jason Bentley, moderator: Do you feel like it’s been this big in Europe for a long time?
Fiona: It feels like it’s really big here. There’s money here, and people want to spend it on house music.
Jason Bentley, moderator: Steve, the Swedish House Mafia has become massive. Is there a downside to that huge popularity for you?
Steve Angello: Well, I think it’s a downside to everything when dance music gets this big. As long as we control the creativity, and the corporate aspect of it. I started DJing when I was 12. Now we’ve come to a point where it’s hard to take the next step.
Jason Bentley, moderator: How’s the balance between the three of you?
Steve Angello: There’s no balance. It’s tough. You have Swedish House Mafia, then you have us solo. It’s a hard task. I think it’s just a lot of planning and meetings to make sure we don’t fuck it up for ourselves. We’re three guys with three egos, it’s always going to be messed up.
Jason Bentley, moderator: Ryan, you’re on the eve of a highly-anticipated arena tour. This is a big deal. You’re doing it with Live Nation, the biggest concert promoter in the world. Are you freaked out?
Kaskade: Sure, to some degree. But just backing up what Richie said, I think a lot of people have been working towards this moment. It’s a big change to go from King King in Hollywood that holds 300 people to the Staples Centre. It’s a little scary but when I set out to do this, the idea was to share my music with as many people as possible. But, as Steve says, when it gets this big, there are challenges – working with people who are new to the music and don’t have the understanding.
You came from being a road warrior, DJing from club to club, and the people are right in front of you. You had that connection and intimacy. I saw your set at Coachella and it was amazing, but we talk about the LED arms race. It’s like, whose video screens are bigger? But is it at the expense of a pure moment?
Kaskade: No, I think it’s just changed. I think the moment happened at King King where the guy in the front row is dripping on the CDJs and shorting out the Pioneer. But I think now the music’s reached so many more people. I think the experience has always been about dancing alone or in a group of friends. It’s not like you’re dancing with anyone. You’re just hanging out, and it’s loud. That can happen in a warehouse, like when I used to go see Richie, or it can happen at the Staples Centre or King King.
Jason Bentley, moderator: Richie, what do you think of the term ‘EDM’? I’ve had a few people say to me, I don’t like that term.
Richie Hawtin: Trying to explain to people who don’t know what I do, electronic dance music makes sense. That’s what I’ve been telling people for 20 years. Techno or house is probably too specific. But I don’t like the term ‘EDM’ as much as I used to. It’s so saturated. But how else can you describe what we’re doing?
Maybe you should drop the ‘D’ and just talk about electronic music. Not everything we’re doing is danceable. Perhaps that ‘D’ tightens the spectrum too much. Maybe it should be just ‘EM’.
Jason Bentley, moderator: How about just the ‘E’. [Loud applause]
Kaskade: I think the term ‘EDM’ is to explain to people like my Mum.
Tony McGuiness, Above & Beyond: I don’t see people being excited about being a fan of ‘EDM’. I can’t imagine anyone with a tattoo saying ‘EDM’ on their arm. That’s why we need the sub-genres, because people are proud to be a minimal techno fan.
Fiona: I don’t think jungle heads would call themselves an ‘EDM’ fan.
Jono Grant, Above & Beyond: When I personally got into clubbing, when I was too young to go out actually, I heard loads of different styles. Then by the early 2000s, there were hard dance nights, trance nights, progressive nights. To me, that’s not interesting, because I’m a music lover. It should be about great music at the end of the day, and forget about what genre they are. [Loud applause]
Jason Bentley, moderator: How would you describe your sound personally?
Jono Grant, Above & Beyond: Well, we came from the trance scene and now what we do, well, some people complain about the name of our radio show, Trance Around The World, because apparently we’re not playing trance anymore. But ultimately you just play whatever you believe in at the time and that changes from day to day.
To echo Richie’s point, I think in the ‘90s in Europe, there were a lot of DJs taking cash in hand and doing all sorts of dodgy stuff and promoters were the same. Now the business has changed a lot, but what the artists do stays the same: sticking to your guns. There’s a danger with the evolution of the business that artists will evolve into businessmen. And I think those artists who are just starting out and don’t have a good team around them, they have to do everything, and that’s cramping them.
Steve Angello: I still do everything.
Jono Grant, Above & Beyond: That’s impressive, but at one time, you’d get development deals where Sony Records used to throw a couple of hundred grand at an artist and send them off into a room with a few producers and writers. They’d hone their craft. Now an artist is expected to do everything, particularly at that early stage.
With Twitter and Facebook, they feel they have to build a following, but actually the core thing they have to focus on is the music. Then you look at someone like Deadmau5. He came about his brand by accident, but he’s fundamentally a talented musician. You see kids on the forums saying it’s just hype and bullshit about him, and that kind of annoys me, because there’s a guy who’s happened to build a great brand and he’s really talented.
ason Bentley, moderator: How important was it for you guys to maintain your label as an identity?
Tony McGuinness, Above & Beyond: It’s interesting, ‘cause I don’t think anything we’ve done has had a five year plan. We’ve just kind of accidentally started out as team of three people, and that turned out to be a great idea. We started our label just as the major labels were stopping signing dance music.
For an awful lot of our fans, they feel very passionate about the label. They’ll have the label logo tattooed on their back, and I think it’s unlikely they’d have a picture of me tattooed on their back.
Richie Hawtin: I was living in Windsor, Canada, just over the border from Detroit. It was a small town and I was one of the weird alternative kids wearing black. After a while, we wanted to find people we connected to. That took me to Detroit. I found my way eventually to a nightclub called Majestic where there was a DJ called Blake Baxter playing. It was ‘87, ‘88. I don’t know if it was the whole ‘peace love unity’ thing with everyone hugging. It wasn’t like that.
I remember going into the Music Institute where Derrick May played and it was a dark room with huge speakers. Everyone was kind of into their own thing. I still don’t believe electronic music is for everybody – I think it’s obtuse and left of centre, and that’s what I felt in that family in that moment. We’ve got something special and it’s not for everybody.
Jason Bentley, moderator: What drives a 16-year-old to go from Windsor to Detroit to find this underground space?
Richie Hawtin: Well, there were a lot of kids from Windsor who definitely would not go over to Detroit. Some parents wouldn’t let them. This was a couple of years after Detroit was the murder capital of America. You’re in a small town and you look across the river to this big city that looks like Gotham: scary, dangerous, cool, futuristic. And it was just attractive. I found deeper, weirder music there and made new friends. I stumbled upon Derrick, Kevin [Saunderson] and those guys as they were just starting to break, and found myself in the middle of a revolution.
I was really into the Sex Pistols and the punk movement, and I read about all the things that happened in ‘79, Harrow Road and all that. And I would go to the Music Institute and think, man, I might be in the middle of a new thing like punk. We’re sitting here now 25 years later, there’s a whole industry and money flying around, but we’ve just been doing what felt right all those years. There’s no book, no charts, no game-plan, no exit strategy.
Jason Bentley, moderator: Rebecca & Fiona, tell us about your scene where you came up back in Sweden?
Rebecca: We started off having our own club. We weren’t DJing at that point. We were bringing our friends there to play, and everybody sucked so bad and their music was so lame and cheesy. We were like, “We want heavier music!” Then we started DJing ourselves, digging for new music. Then we found ourselves in our own little community.
Jason Bentley, moderator: Do you feel as women you have to prove yourself that much more?
Fiona: Yeah, from the beginning there was a lot of proving ourselves. Everybody was asking, is it really you producing? Is it really you DJing? Still people think it’s not really us DJing, like there’s some small person in the booth playing instead of us. But we are so used to those questions, it’s just natural now. How is it even possible, a small person under the DJ booth? Before us, there were a lot of famous girls in the deep house scene, but not many in the big-room house scene.
Jason Bentley, moderator: Steve, tell us about some of your early inspirations.
Steve Angello: Where we grew up, Sebastian [Ingrosso]’s dad had two record labels, so we grew up in the techno scene with Adam Beyer, Thomas Krome, Carl Lekebusch. I was into breaks and hip hop because I was a scratch DJ when I was a kid. Then Daft Punk came for us. I could connect better with that coming from breaks than the techno scene, because there were a lot of cut-ups and samples.
Growing up, the scene in Sweden was so weak, so that inspired us. The police classified all dance events as drug events. They had a specific group that just shut down parties. It was tough for us. There was a small gay club called the Rainbow Room that fit about 80 to 100 people. Me, Sebastian, Axwell and Eric Prydz started DJing there every single week. The Rainbow Room made us into what we are. We were six guys playing vinyl, everybody wasted, couldn’t mix, the needles were sliding.
Steve Angello: So this is the thing. Swedish House Mafia was not a formed group. There was a forum in Sweden in the late ‘90s where all the DJs and producers would hang out. When we would bring people to Sweden to DJ with us, they’d ask, “So what are you guys, some kind of house mafia?” So they came up with the name. We didn’t use the name.
Then one day Pete Tong heard about that story and said, “I’ve heard you’re the Swedish House Mafia.” And we were like, OK, whatever. Let’s just do this thing, get together once in a while and wing it, it’s not going to be big. Then a few years later, we’re at Madison Square Garden.
Jason Bentley, moderator: Above & Beyond, I’d like to hear your early club experiences?
Jono Grant, Above & Beyond: I was playing in bands, and had a lot of musical friends, but I got into dance music through Paul Oakenfold’s Goa mix in about ‘95 or ‘96. I had it on cassette and there were a couple of records that really stood out for me. Before that, I was into Depeche Mode and New Order. I can remember one pivotal moment when I heard Stardust’s Music Sounds Better With You for the first time and although the music we produce isn’t like that, it was just one of those tracks that stood out as incredible.
Tony McGuiness, Above & Beyond: For me, I never wanted to be a DJ. I was having so much fun dancing. All my friends were buying decks and records and I was like, that’s so fucking tedious. I’d just go to a club and have a ‘drink’ [does inverted commas with his hands] and get on the biggest podium I could find ‘cause I’m quite small.
Rebecca: It’s been amazing. People love house music and they’re really excited about us being girls as well. There’s so many guys usually you can’t even see the girls.
Jason Bentley, moderator: Do you feel like it’s been this big in Europe for a long time?
Fiona: It feels like it’s really big here. There’s money here, and people want to spend it on house music.
Jason Bentley, moderator: Steve, the Swedish House Mafia has become massive. Is there a downside to that huge popularity for you?
Steve Angello: Well, I think it’s a downside to everything when dance music gets this big. As long as we control the creativity, and the corporate aspect of it. I started DJing when I was 12. Now we’ve come to a point where it’s hard to take the next step.
Jason Bentley, moderator: How’s the balance between the three of you?
Steve Angello: There’s no balance. It’s tough. You have Swedish House Mafia, then you have us solo. It’s a hard task. I think it’s just a lot of planning and meetings to make sure we don’t fuck it up for ourselves. We’re three guys with three egos, it’s always going to be messed up.
Jason Bentley, moderator: Ryan, you’re on the eve of a highly-anticipated arena tour. This is a big deal. You’re doing it with Live Nation, the biggest concert promoter in the world. Are you freaked out?
Kaskade: Sure, to some degree. But just backing up what Richie said, I think a lot of people have been working towards this moment. It’s a big change to go from King King in Hollywood that holds 300 people to the Staples Centre. It’s a little scary but when I set out to do this, the idea was to share my music with as many people as possible. But, as Steve says, when it gets this big, there are challenges – working with people who are new to the music and don’t have the understanding.
Richie Hawtin: “I still don’t believe electronic music is for everybody.”Jason Bentley, moderator: Kaskade, you gave me a walk-through of your stage at a rehearsal space a couple of weeks ago. It was amazing the scale of the spectacle you’re taking out on the road. This is how you bring the experience with you, but I wonder if it becomes a distraction from the true connection you have with people?
You came from being a road warrior, DJing from club to club, and the people are right in front of you. You had that connection and intimacy. I saw your set at Coachella and it was amazing, but we talk about the LED arms race. It’s like, whose video screens are bigger? But is it at the expense of a pure moment?
Kaskade: No, I think it’s just changed. I think the moment happened at King King where the guy in the front row is dripping on the CDJs and shorting out the Pioneer. But I think now the music’s reached so many more people. I think the experience has always been about dancing alone or in a group of friends. It’s not like you’re dancing with anyone. You’re just hanging out, and it’s loud. That can happen in a warehouse, like when I used to go see Richie, or it can happen at the Staples Centre or King King.
Jason Bentley, moderator: Richie, what do you think of the term ‘EDM’? I’ve had a few people say to me, I don’t like that term.
Richie Hawtin: Trying to explain to people who don’t know what I do, electronic dance music makes sense. That’s what I’ve been telling people for 20 years. Techno or house is probably too specific. But I don’t like the term ‘EDM’ as much as I used to. It’s so saturated. But how else can you describe what we’re doing?
Maybe you should drop the ‘D’ and just talk about electronic music. Not everything we’re doing is danceable. Perhaps that ‘D’ tightens the spectrum too much. Maybe it should be just ‘EM’.
Jason Bentley, moderator: How about just the ‘E’. [Loud applause]
Kaskade: I think the term ‘EDM’ is to explain to people like my Mum.
Tony McGuiness, Above & Beyond: I don’t see people being excited about being a fan of ‘EDM’. I can’t imagine anyone with a tattoo saying ‘EDM’ on their arm. That’s why we need the sub-genres, because people are proud to be a minimal techno fan.
Fiona: I don’t think jungle heads would call themselves an ‘EDM’ fan.
Jono Grant, Above & Beyond: When I personally got into clubbing, when I was too young to go out actually, I heard loads of different styles. Then by the early 2000s, there were hard dance nights, trance nights, progressive nights. To me, that’s not interesting, because I’m a music lover. It should be about great music at the end of the day, and forget about what genre they are. [Loud applause]
Jason Bentley, moderator: How would you describe your sound personally?
Jono Grant, Above & Beyond: Well, we came from the trance scene and now what we do, well, some people complain about the name of our radio show, Trance Around The World, because apparently we’re not playing trance anymore. But ultimately you just play whatever you believe in at the time and that changes from day to day.
To echo Richie’s point, I think in the ‘90s in Europe, there were a lot of DJs taking cash in hand and doing all sorts of dodgy stuff and promoters were the same. Now the business has changed a lot, but what the artists do stays the same: sticking to your guns. There’s a danger with the evolution of the business that artists will evolve into businessmen. And I think those artists who are just starting out and don’t have a good team around them, they have to do everything, and that’s cramping them.
Steve Angello: I still do everything.
Jono Grant, Above & Beyond: That’s impressive, but at one time, you’d get development deals where Sony Records used to throw a couple of hundred grand at an artist and send them off into a room with a few producers and writers. They’d hone their craft. Now an artist is expected to do everything, particularly at that early stage.
With Twitter and Facebook, they feel they have to build a following, but actually the core thing they have to focus on is the music. Then you look at someone like Deadmau5. He came about his brand by accident, but he’s fundamentally a talented musician. You see kids on the forums saying it’s just hype and bullshit about him, and that kind of annoys me, because there’s a guy who’s happened to build a great brand and he’s really talented.
ason Bentley, moderator: How important was it for you guys to maintain your label as an identity?
Tony McGuinness, Above & Beyond: It’s interesting, ‘cause I don’t think anything we’ve done has had a five year plan. We’ve just kind of accidentally started out as team of three people, and that turned out to be a great idea. We started our label just as the major labels were stopping signing dance music.
For an awful lot of our fans, they feel very passionate about the label. They’ll have the label logo tattooed on their back, and I think it’s unlikely they’d have a picture of me tattooed on their back.
Tony, Above & Beyond: “I can’t imagine anyone with a tattoo saying ‘EDM’ on their arm. That’s why we need sub-genres.”Jason Bentley, moderator: I think everyone on this panel was drawn to this music through its sense of community. I’d like a few of you to describe that first place, the first club scene, where you felt like you found a family. Richie, I’m curious about that for you.
Richie Hawtin: I was living in Windsor, Canada, just over the border from Detroit. It was a small town and I was one of the weird alternative kids wearing black. After a while, we wanted to find people we connected to. That took me to Detroit. I found my way eventually to a nightclub called Majestic where there was a DJ called Blake Baxter playing. It was ‘87, ‘88. I don’t know if it was the whole ‘peace love unity’ thing with everyone hugging. It wasn’t like that.
I remember going into the Music Institute where Derrick May played and it was a dark room with huge speakers. Everyone was kind of into their own thing. I still don’t believe electronic music is for everybody – I think it’s obtuse and left of centre, and that’s what I felt in that family in that moment. We’ve got something special and it’s not for everybody.
Jason Bentley, moderator: What drives a 16-year-old to go from Windsor to Detroit to find this underground space?
Richie Hawtin: Well, there were a lot of kids from Windsor who definitely would not go over to Detroit. Some parents wouldn’t let them. This was a couple of years after Detroit was the murder capital of America. You’re in a small town and you look across the river to this big city that looks like Gotham: scary, dangerous, cool, futuristic. And it was just attractive. I found deeper, weirder music there and made new friends. I stumbled upon Derrick, Kevin [Saunderson] and those guys as they were just starting to break, and found myself in the middle of a revolution.
I was really into the Sex Pistols and the punk movement, and I read about all the things that happened in ‘79, Harrow Road and all that. And I would go to the Music Institute and think, man, I might be in the middle of a new thing like punk. We’re sitting here now 25 years later, there’s a whole industry and money flying around, but we’ve just been doing what felt right all those years. There’s no book, no charts, no game-plan, no exit strategy.
Jason Bentley, moderator: Rebecca & Fiona, tell us about your scene where you came up back in Sweden?
Rebecca: We started off having our own club. We weren’t DJing at that point. We were bringing our friends there to play, and everybody sucked so bad and their music was so lame and cheesy. We were like, “We want heavier music!” Then we started DJing ourselves, digging for new music. Then we found ourselves in our own little community.
Jason Bentley, moderator: Do you feel as women you have to prove yourself that much more?
Fiona: Yeah, from the beginning there was a lot of proving ourselves. Everybody was asking, is it really you producing? Is it really you DJing? Still people think it’s not really us DJing, like there’s some small person in the booth playing instead of us. But we are so used to those questions, it’s just natural now. How is it even possible, a small person under the DJ booth? Before us, there were a lot of famous girls in the deep house scene, but not many in the big-room house scene.
Jason Bentley, moderator: Steve, tell us about some of your early inspirations.
Steve Angello: Where we grew up, Sebastian [Ingrosso]’s dad had two record labels, so we grew up in the techno scene with Adam Beyer, Thomas Krome, Carl Lekebusch. I was into breaks and hip hop because I was a scratch DJ when I was a kid. Then Daft Punk came for us. I could connect better with that coming from breaks than the techno scene, because there were a lot of cut-ups and samples.
Growing up, the scene in Sweden was so weak, so that inspired us. The police classified all dance events as drug events. They had a specific group that just shut down parties. It was tough for us. There was a small gay club called the Rainbow Room that fit about 80 to 100 people. Me, Sebastian, Axwell and Eric Prydz started DJing there every single week. The Rainbow Room made us into what we are. We were six guys playing vinyl, everybody wasted, couldn’t mix, the needles were sliding.
Steve Angello: “Look, if I could choose, our shows would be free. But production would be shit.”Jason Bentley, moderator: Is it true that Eric Prydz was once part of the Swedish House Mafia?
Steve Angello: So this is the thing. Swedish House Mafia was not a formed group. There was a forum in Sweden in the late ‘90s where all the DJs and producers would hang out. When we would bring people to Sweden to DJ with us, they’d ask, “So what are you guys, some kind of house mafia?” So they came up with the name. We didn’t use the name.
Then one day Pete Tong heard about that story and said, “I’ve heard you’re the Swedish House Mafia.” And we were like, OK, whatever. Let’s just do this thing, get together once in a while and wing it, it’s not going to be big. Then a few years later, we’re at Madison Square Garden.
Jason Bentley, moderator: Above & Beyond, I’d like to hear your early club experiences?
Jono Grant, Above & Beyond: I was playing in bands, and had a lot of musical friends, but I got into dance music through Paul Oakenfold’s Goa mix in about ‘95 or ‘96. I had it on cassette and there were a couple of records that really stood out for me. Before that, I was into Depeche Mode and New Order. I can remember one pivotal moment when I heard Stardust’s Music Sounds Better With You for the first time and although the music we produce isn’t like that, it was just one of those tracks that stood out as incredible.
Tony McGuiness, Above & Beyond: For me, I never wanted to be a DJ. I was having so much fun dancing. All my friends were buying decks and records and I was like, that’s so fucking tedious. I’d just go to a club and have a ‘drink’ [does inverted commas with his hands] and get on the biggest podium I could find ‘cause I’m quite small.
I’d be the first one dancing and the last one out of the club.
Between ‘94 and ‘98 in London, there was an explosion in the
underground. It seems like a stage in the process that’s maybe been
missed in the States.
There’s this bit in the middle between the underground and the big business that seems to have been missed here: long queues outside clubs, all interested in what was a very underground scene. We’d dress up. I remember a club called Malibu Stacey where a guy called Toni Tambourine would police the line and say, “Take a good hard look at yourself. If you don’t look fabulous, you’re not getting in!” And people would actually walk out the queue and go home.
There was an explosion in what was quite a subversive scene, and it was all about the people who turned out on a Saturday night. It was that sense of community that impressed itself on me: I’m still friends with people I’ve met at dark, dingy nightclubs off my tits.
Jono Grant, Above & Beyond: I think that touches on one of the biggest shifts I’ve seen in my time in the industry. Then, it was more about what the night was, it was more a Godskitchen or Gatecrasher night. Now it’s more about the artist, that’s the draw.
Kaskade: Similar to Richie, growing up in the U.S., it was very ‘alternative’. One of my friend’s older sisters had a license and we’d heard of this club Medusas in Chicago. So we hitched a ride. This is 1985. It was an interesting blend of industrial music – Wax Trax! Records was really big, Ministry, Revolting Cocks – blended with acid house. Going into that room for the first time with a couple of thousand kids was fascinating. I felt very at home. I don’t think I missed a Saturday after that.
Audience question: When do you think we can get rid of all the terms and the world will realise it’s just music?
Tony McGuiness, Above & Beyond: Are you advocating losing the ‘E’ and the ‘D’ now, and we’ll just go with ‘M’? [Laughter]
Steve Angello: I think the press just needs a term to refer to. If Rolling Stone writes an article on Steve Angello DJing, they won’t understand what I do, ‘cause a rock guy doesn’t DJ. They just need something to identify us.
Audience question: Do you think that major labels will never understand the grassroots culture that EDM is about? As we’ve seen with Above & Beyond, they understand the culture, and their label has been successful enough for them to have their own stage at EDC. Do you think the major labels will be able to understand what you’ve been doing for 20-plus years?
Steve Angello: No. They won’t get it. It’s a business, you know? It’s like anything that becomes big and corporate. If the figures are right, business is good. EDM is popular right now. Every major label calls me every single day. People are trying to buy my label. But at the end of the day, without the people behind the labels with the passion, they can’t exist.
These majors don’t know my fans, they don’t know the language, they don’t know the crowds. It’s like designers, it’s like cars: anything that’s coming up, when the big guys see it, they get scared and they buy it. That’s what it is. As long as we’re being creative and passionate about it, it’s all good.
Audience question: Kaskade, a few weeks ago, you put out a track All You with Waka Flocka Flame and The Cataracs. It was 110-BPM and it really freaked out a lot of your fans. Do you find it to be a double-edged sword when you want to show more of yourself as an artist and branch out a bit?
Kaskade: That song is actually seven years old, and my true fans know that song. The Cataracts sampled my song and I thought it was in a very clever way. But I thought if they didn’t put ‘featuring Kaskade’, everyone would be hitting me up on Facebook telling me, ‘These guys ripped you off!’
They didn’t rip me off. They sampled it, I know about it. Congratulations to them digging back seven years and finding one of my old songs. Recently I did a drum & bass remix and while a lot of people were open-minded, others got angry at me. To them, I just said, in ‘97 I put out a drum & bass record, so dig back there.
Kaskade: I think it’s regrettable. I couldn’t afford to go to half the shows I play sometimes. There’s a time and place for everything. I play in Miami at LIV and I play in Staples Centre where there’s a $20 ticket. The guy who plays $500 doesn’t want to hang out with the kid who pays ten bucks. I’d like to play as many nights as I could, but I also have a family, so it’s about trying to have a life as well.
Steve Angello: I fight with promoters every single day about ticket prices. I think it’s important to be able to give your fans a certain amount of tickets for each show. There are fan tickets. I can’t change the club rules – I can’t tell the owners to put down the prices. Sometimes you get a lot of shit, like, “The tickets are $300!”
Look, if I could choose, it’d be free, but I can’t. If we had free parties every night, production would be shit, sound would be shit, there wouldn’t be bars. We’d be standing there playing on a table. We’ve seen the same thing in Ibiza for years. In August, tickets are 100 Euros. It’s a lot of money to go into the clubs. But the thing is, it’s still going to be rammed, so why would they take down the ticket prices?
Kaskade: I try and throw a free party and people in L.A. riot.
Credit : Dancing Astronaut
There’s this bit in the middle between the underground and the big business that seems to have been missed here: long queues outside clubs, all interested in what was a very underground scene. We’d dress up. I remember a club called Malibu Stacey where a guy called Toni Tambourine would police the line and say, “Take a good hard look at yourself. If you don’t look fabulous, you’re not getting in!” And people would actually walk out the queue and go home.
There was an explosion in what was quite a subversive scene, and it was all about the people who turned out on a Saturday night. It was that sense of community that impressed itself on me: I’m still friends with people I’ve met at dark, dingy nightclubs off my tits.
Jono Grant, Above & Beyond: I think that touches on one of the biggest shifts I’ve seen in my time in the industry. Then, it was more about what the night was, it was more a Godskitchen or Gatecrasher night. Now it’s more about the artist, that’s the draw.
Kaskade: Similar to Richie, growing up in the U.S., it was very ‘alternative’. One of my friend’s older sisters had a license and we’d heard of this club Medusas in Chicago. So we hitched a ride. This is 1985. It was an interesting blend of industrial music – Wax Trax! Records was really big, Ministry, Revolting Cocks – blended with acid house. Going into that room for the first time with a couple of thousand kids was fascinating. I felt very at home. I don’t think I missed a Saturday after that.
Audience question: When do you think we can get rid of all the terms and the world will realise it’s just music?
Tony McGuiness, Above & Beyond: Are you advocating losing the ‘E’ and the ‘D’ now, and we’ll just go with ‘M’? [Laughter]
Steve Angello: I think the press just needs a term to refer to. If Rolling Stone writes an article on Steve Angello DJing, they won’t understand what I do, ‘cause a rock guy doesn’t DJ. They just need something to identify us.
Audience question: Do you think that major labels will never understand the grassroots culture that EDM is about? As we’ve seen with Above & Beyond, they understand the culture, and their label has been successful enough for them to have their own stage at EDC. Do you think the major labels will be able to understand what you’ve been doing for 20-plus years?
Steve Angello: No. They won’t get it. It’s a business, you know? It’s like anything that becomes big and corporate. If the figures are right, business is good. EDM is popular right now. Every major label calls me every single day. People are trying to buy my label. But at the end of the day, without the people behind the labels with the passion, they can’t exist.
These majors don’t know my fans, they don’t know the language, they don’t know the crowds. It’s like designers, it’s like cars: anything that’s coming up, when the big guys see it, they get scared and they buy it. That’s what it is. As long as we’re being creative and passionate about it, it’s all good.
Audience question: Kaskade, a few weeks ago, you put out a track All You with Waka Flocka Flame and The Cataracs. It was 110-BPM and it really freaked out a lot of your fans. Do you find it to be a double-edged sword when you want to show more of yourself as an artist and branch out a bit?
Kaskade: That song is actually seven years old, and my true fans know that song. The Cataracts sampled my song and I thought it was in a very clever way. But I thought if they didn’t put ‘featuring Kaskade’, everyone would be hitting me up on Facebook telling me, ‘These guys ripped you off!’
They didn’t rip me off. They sampled it, I know about it. Congratulations to them digging back seven years and finding one of my old songs. Recently I did a drum & bass remix and while a lot of people were open-minded, others got angry at me. To them, I just said, in ‘97 I put out a drum & bass record, so dig back there.
Kaskade: “I couldn’t afford to go to half the shows I play sometimes.”Audience question: From a fan’s standout, there’s an incredible ceiling on some of these nightclub shows. In Miami during Music Week, there’s a club that charges around $400 to walk in the door. And I’m curious to see how you feel about that. The price of admission to see an artist perform is astronomical.
Kaskade: I think it’s regrettable. I couldn’t afford to go to half the shows I play sometimes. There’s a time and place for everything. I play in Miami at LIV and I play in Staples Centre where there’s a $20 ticket. The guy who plays $500 doesn’t want to hang out with the kid who pays ten bucks. I’d like to play as many nights as I could, but I also have a family, so it’s about trying to have a life as well.
Steve Angello: I fight with promoters every single day about ticket prices. I think it’s important to be able to give your fans a certain amount of tickets for each show. There are fan tickets. I can’t change the club rules – I can’t tell the owners to put down the prices. Sometimes you get a lot of shit, like, “The tickets are $300!”
Look, if I could choose, it’d be free, but I can’t. If we had free parties every night, production would be shit, sound would be shit, there wouldn’t be bars. We’d be standing there playing on a table. We’ve seen the same thing in Ibiza for years. In August, tickets are 100 Euros. It’s a lot of money to go into the clubs. But the thing is, it’s still going to be rammed, so why would they take down the ticket prices?
Kaskade: I try and throw a free party and people in L.A. riot.
Credit : Dancing Astronaut
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