With a stunning three night run at Los Angeles’ historic Shrine Auditorium, Above & Beyond demonstrated that, in the right hands, dance music can become more than just entertainment. Paavo, Jono, and Tony have escalated the craft of producing and DJing into something that can only be described as performance art of the highest pedigree.
We were there for the first two nights of Group Therapy LA, and we’ve assembled a pretty exhaustive catalog of the songs we heard. A quick glance through our track list, however, reaffirms our belief than an Above & Beyond gig is something more than a selection of tracks played in a particular order. The Group Therapy experience defies rational explanation. It’s magical.
Insomniac Events is borrowing the MetLife stadium this weekend for a little music festival called the Electric Daisy Carnival. For a few glorious hours, some of the world’s biggest DJs have descended upon the New York Giants’ stadium and surrounding parking lots, which have been spectacularly transformed. We’ve brought you photos and video, and now, thanks to our friends at House4DJ, we have live sets.
It’s summer, folks. The American EDM festival circuit is now in full swing, and the big-room heavyweights are adjusting nicely to the change in scale. Enjoy yourselves — and let us know your favorites in the comments.
Update: R3hab, Chuckie, Shermanology, and Alesso have gone ahead and uploaded their sets to SoundCloud. Grab the free downloads below. Similarly, TheFuture.FM has all the sets available to stream without any of the Zippyshare nastiness — but sadly you can’t download.
SiriusXM’s Electric Area will be streaming live and recorded sets from the Electric Daisy Carnival in New York this weekend, beginning in less than 15 minutes with Cosmic Gate’s performance at the Kinetic Field.
The broadcast lineup features a smattering of sounds in almost every genre imaginable, including trance, techno, deep house, progressive house, Dutch house, dubstep, and drum n bass. We’ll also be hearing surprise performances from a few special guests.
Click past the break for a full broadcast schedule.
The relationship between Tony, Paavo, Jono, and their fans is already the stuff of legend — they’ve brought audience members on stage to drop their biggest song, helped a young man propose to his partner during Creamfields, and become the #1 trending topic on Twitter for both their Trance Around the World 350 and 400 radio broadcasts.
Only two days remain until Above & Beyond and Insomniac Events transform the Shrine into an Anjunabeats trance temple. Now, the world’s greatest trance trio taking is taking things one step further by offering you the chance to appear in an episode of A&B TV.
Above & Beyond would like you to submit a video of you and your friends preparing for, driving to, and dancing your shoes off at their upcoming Group Therapy LA gigs (you can include afterparty footage, too). The video should be 90 seconds or less. For full submission instructions, click here.
With the addition of techno superstars Joris Voorn, Nic Fanciulli, Seth Troxler, and Guy Gerber, Insomniac Events has signalled that EDC Las Vegas 2012 will be a truly world-class music festival experience. Voorn, Fanciulli, Troxler, and Gerber probably won’t sell many tickets, and they definitely won’t play at the main stage. They will, however, add to EDC’s reputation among more discerning dance music fans.
If you can escape the wonders of the Kinetic Field, we encourage you to visit some of EDC’s smaller stages, where some of the world’s most creative DJs will showcase their skills. Minimal music is still under the radar in the U.S. (progressive, electro, and big-room house still reign supreme here). If you’re looking for an irresistible groove, we’ll see you at the techno stage.
Anjunabeats wunderkid Mat Zo shows us the lighter side of his personality in the first episode of “ZoTV,” a new web series that will document his life on stage and backstage. We get to see Mat at a pre-gig dinner with some friends, then preparing himself to open for Above & Beyond at the legendary Brixton Academy for their Group Therapy tour.
Soundtracked by the club mix of his original production “The Sky” (which will be released next week), “ZoTV” is a fun little glimpse into the inner circle of one of dance music’s most exciting young names. It can’t be easy growing up in the spotlight, particularly when your friends finish the vodka before you get a a single drop, but Mat Zo is clearly enjoying the ride.
Now in its fourth edition, Anjunabeats Worldwide offers a glimpse inside the wonderful world of Anjunabeats — a magical place where the future of melodic trance is groomed for the big time. In the past, the album has helped launch the careers of Mat Zo, Arty, and Super8 & Tab, all of whom went on to crack the DJ MagTop 100. Anjunabeats Worldwide, therefore, is an appropriate title for this series, because all the artists featured here are world-class.
Anjunabeats Worldwide 04comprises two excellent but entirely discrete mixes. The first, from Israel’s Maor Levi, is classic Anjuna — full of swirling, twirling, trickling melodies that can completely fill a room while still managing to sound like they’re coming from far away. The second, from Poland’s Nitrous Oxide, is a devastating reminder that for all of trance’s ethereal beauty, the genre is still very much about wicked beats.
Deniz Koyu’s latest offering, the bouncy, big-room “Bong,” follows squarely in the footsteps of his most successful original productions — “Tung” and “Hertz.” After hearing Fedde Le Grand preview it during his radio show, we can’t wait to experience “Bong” on the festival circuit, where Koyu’s tracks typically come alive. “Bong” is very similar to “Tung,” featuring a simple, blaring horn melody sitting atop a powerful bassline. At this point, it’s not quite as punchy as “Tung” or overwhelmingly awesome as “Hertz,” but we’ll give Mr. Koyu a little more time to work on it.
Update: Deniz has taken to Twitter to call the track his ‘follow up to Tung’ for the summer. Well — that raises the stakes.
Update 2: “Bong” will be released on June 8th on Refune Records. By the way, we have officially come full circle on the track and expect it to become a staple of the festival season.
W&W’s thunderously huge “Shotgun” has gained considerable traction over the past few weeks. We heard it repeatedly during the A State of Trance 550 live broadcasts, when it was played by Wezz Devall, Sied van Riel, Armin van Buuren, and W&W themselves. Since then, it’s received support from Gareth Emery, Arty, Marco V, and Thomas Gold (men who know a thing or two about rocking a big, big room).
“Shotgun” treads the fine line between trance and big-room house, and it would be confusing to classify it as one or the other. The synths, when we hear them, are distinctively trancey. But we don’t hear them much — most of the track is rhythmic rather than melodic. Rumble, thump, pummel. Rumble, thump, pummel.
So is W&W’s effort better than Zedd’s “Shotgun“? Let us know what you think in the comments.
W&W – Shotgun (Original Mix)
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They’ve given us Nocturnal Wonderland, taken us Beyond Wonderland, helped us Escape from Wonderland, and blinded us with White Wonderland. Now, the kind folks at Insomniac are back with Wet Wonderland, a weekly pool party at Marquee. If you like big beats and itty-bitty-bikinis, then this is the Wonderland for you.
The new event begins on April 29, when Kaskade returns to Sin City. We’re still waiting on further artist announcements, but we’ll keep you posted as soon as we hear anything.
“The Dayclub experience is an incredible place to showcase what Marquee and Insomniac do best – together,” said Insomniac’s CEO, Pasquale Rotella, in an official statement. “Wet Wonderland will be a unique Dayclub event and we’re so excited to work with the Marquee family to make it happen.”
