For the DJs themselves, it is an unbelievably stressful time of the year, especially because it is coupled in with the busiest stretch of gigs due to Ibiza and the summer festivals. Booking agencies and promoters will continually go back and forth for every major festival or arena event all year long, fighting for which DJ gets to play the main stage, who gets the best timeslots or who gets billed above whom; and they primarily use the results of the DJ Mag poll each year as leverage.
So maybe it might be a good idea to reflect on your vote this year because a lot of these DJs depend on it.
What a solid booking! Ben Gold has been very enthusiastic about the Escapade Music Festival on his Twitter so it's only fitting that he gets his own after party tonight at Bijou.
"Our goal," Lim adds, "is to show the world that gloving has evolved from this rave thing into a respectable art form."
That quote is from Brian Lim, owner of Emazing Lights. I agree with his sentiment as I also believe the whole light glove phenomena has found a place in the EDM scene without having it be associated with the drug culture.
I think Deadmau5 is a real talent and a visionary. The Swedes are epic showmen with incredible studio savvy. Skrillex makes music that sounds like my inner 16-year-old; visceral, out of control, but from the heart. I love him. I think Flux Pavilion, Porter Robinson, Knife Party, Steve Aoki, etc. etc. are awesome. But, after all these years, I still think Danny Tenaglia is a god.
What worries me is not that DJs are simply “pressing play,” but that they’re pressing play on the same tracks in the same order night after night after night. There’s new music being released at a breakneck pace, but many of the big name DJs are still spinning the same freaking sets every time. They are playing the same bootlegs, making the same transitions, and delivering the same exact shtick every day of the week.
Great point. This should be apparent for all of those EDM fans that have paid any attention to track listings of major DJs in the past 6 months. With all of this technology available to the modern day DJ this cookie cutter approach to live shows should no longer be acceptable.
Sometimes I wish that the EDM scene could look to the comedy world for the way forward out of this stagnation. Louis C.K is one of the biggest comedy acts in the business and he's almost universally praised by his peers for his work ethic. Louis C.K is famous for literally throwing out all of his old jokes and creating a solid new hour of material every year. When developing this material he is known to refine his jokes in New York comedy clubs until he gets it just right. Sometimes he bombs on stage and that's okay because what's important is that he's constantly challenging himself to create something new. DJs shouldn't be afraid to take a little risk to give fans something new to listen and dance to instead of simply sticking to what has worked in the past.
Hip Hop went through the same stages House music is currently going through, people wanted to make money and make Hip Hop into POP music. I mean look at the state of Hip Hop today, it’s awful, good rappers are a dime a dozen, and the rest of the fools are rapping about some bullshit nonsense, they all want the same thing - Money, Hoes and Fame. It’s really a global musical epidemic. This is what you see on MTV or other TV channels; there is no love, no pride, and no integrity.
I leave you with this clip of Paris Hilton's DJ debut in Brazil:
No comment necessary as the video speaks for itself. Deadmau5 couldn't have timed his post any better.
Zimmerman slams EDM stars who show up to a live gig and press play. "David Guetta has two iPods and a mixer and he just plays tracks - like, 'Here's one with Akon, check it out!', " he says, "Even Skrillex [a friend of Zimmerman's] isn't doing anything too technical.
First deadmau5 wears Skrillex' mobile number on his t-shirt to the Grammys and now this. Since Skrillex has fully established his own OWSLA label are these two really friends right now? There's plenty of people that have been accused of just pressing play in live gigs, why did he choose Skrillex?
