Dance
Tomorrowland Gets New Life From Belgium’s Goal to Reopen by September
That could prove challenging for Tomorrowland, one of the biggest EDM events in the world, which typically draws about 400,000 attendees to Boom, Belgium. The 2019 edition ran six days over two weekends. After canceling last year, the festival scheduled its annual flagship event, normally held in July, to Aug. 27-29 and Sept. 3-5, because of ongoing COVID-19 flareups in Europe. It’s unclear whether the festival would need to adjust its planned dates or capacity to accommodate Belgium’s rules. Nevertheless, organizers sounded a hopeful note on Tuesday. “We are delighted and grateful to hear that the Belgian Government has given a realistic perspective for large festivals in Belgium towards the end of the summer,” Tomorrowland said in a statement. “We want to study the guidelines and paramet...
Insomniac Ruling Upheld Despite Appeal That Judge Was Heavily Medicated
The dispute is linked to a disagreement over the future of the How Sweet It Is music festival, which ran from 1999 to 2001. Rotella helped revive and finance the festival in 2005 but had a falling out with Alper and Ballou over the future of the event in 2010. Alper and Ballou claimed Rotella created a competing event called Beyond Wonderland, which still operates today, and that they were owed a piece of the festival. The legal fight went to arbitration, where the case was heard by Schiavelli, who eventually ruled against Alper and Ballou, saying the men bore most of the responsibility for the collapse of their relationship with Rotella and Insomniac due to their “cavalier and essentially non-negotiable attitude.” Schiavelli also noted that the lawsuit wasn’t filed against Insom...
First Spin: The Week’s Best New Dance Tracks From Flight Facility & Channel Tres, Godlands & More
Flight Facilities feat. Channel Tres, “Lights Up” Once again demonstrating his position as one of the most essential collaborators (and standalone voices) in current dance music, Channel Tres saunters onto “Lights Up” — his new collaborative single with Flight Facilities — and turns the track on a low simmer that heats up into a delicious all-out disco swirl. While the strings pay homage to legendary haunts like Paradise Garage, the venerable Aussie duo also layer up the synth and kick drum, adding, they say in a statement “some 90’s and 00’s elements to give the song its own character” and prevent it entry from the derivative zone. Meanwhile, Tres’ insistent refrain of “got the whole city blowin’ up” demonstrates, as ...
The Revolution Will Be Digitized: How RAC Is Using NFTs to Empower Artists
Specifically, crypto advocates like Anjos want to create a better financial system for the music industry, which would increase transparency and make more accurate payments in real-time. The technology, as he and his fellow crypto fans see it, could even be used to stop ticket scalpers and hold the copyrights to songs and catalogs (the latter would be challenging to execute given music’s complex web of rights holders). “There’s tons of value that’s being left on the table or that’s going to the wrong people” in the music industry, he says. “This technology essentially enables [us to] replace a lot of the plumbing.” In 2017, Anjos discovered Ethereum, the blockchain on which the majority of NFTs are sold, and home to Ether, the second-most popular c...
Months After Her Arrest Made Global Headlines, Sama’ Abdulhadi Is Still Pushing Palestinian Techno
When she got out and home to her family in Ramallah, Abdulhadi’s situation had become an international story. The heart of the matter was essentially public opinion. While Abdulhadi had secured all of the proper permits from the Palestinian authorities to host the livestream, when word got out that a woman was playing techno at the site, an angry crowd turned up in protest, shutting down the show and looking for someone to blame for the perceived impropriety. Authorities arrested Abdulhadi. Critics accused her of desecrating a holy site; others said she’d simply become a scapegoat. While Abdulhadi is typically based in France — where she moved years ago after gaining acceptance into the artist-in-residency program at Cité internationale des arts and where she cu...
First Spin: The Week’s Best New Dance Tracks From Rochelle Jordan, Jessie Ware & More
Rochelle Jordan’s latest single, “Already,” is about the moment when one decides to leave a toxic relationship. It’s a moment, however difficult, that she navigates with grace and finesse. A highlight from her new album Play With the Changes (out now on Tokimonsta’s Young Art label), “Already” features Jordan’s vocals gliding over smooth deep house production — she’s cool and breezy in her delivery, as if finally emotionally detached when she tells her subject that if they were going to change for the better, it would have already happened. When she trades in her airy R&B croons for husky rap, her boss transformation feels complete. “This song is the moment it becomes so clear to you, and you feel this sense of freedom because you know it’s actually over in your mind and hea...
Regard, Troye Sivan & Tate McRae Debut on Dance/Electronic Charts With ‘You’
“‘You’ is a relatable and real love story for everyone in our lives,” Regard says. Plus, moves for Steve Aoki, Kiiara, Alesso & Armin van Buuren. Regard, Troye Sivan and Tate McRae debut at No. 4 on Billboard‘s multimetric Hot Dance/Electronic Songs chart (dated May 1) with “You.” It ties for the highest start this year, after DJ Snake and Selena Gomez’s “Selfish Love” in March. “I still love ‘You’ as much as after I finished it,” Regard tells Billboard. “‘You’ is a relatable and real love story for everyone in our lives. Troye is such a talented artist and Tate has angelic vocals.” “You” is the third top 10 on the tally for Regard, following “Ride It.” (N...
Eric Prydz’s Move to CAA Will Help ‘Bring His Artistic Vision’ to Wider U.S. Audience
Electronic titan Eric Prydz has signed with CAA and will be represented by music agent Alex Becket, whose roster also includes Rüfüs Du Sol, Lee Burridge, Arcade Fire’s Win Butler, Bedouin, Monolink and more. Prydz was previously repped by Paul Morris at Paradigm, although Morris left the agency in March to work exclusively with Tiësto. Prydz will continue to be managed by Michael “Mick” Sershall of London’s Sershall Management. CAA’s Darryl Eaton, Hunter Williams and Mac Clark were also key in securing the signing and will work alongside Becket on Prydz projects. Prydz’s team also includes global press by Infamous PR. “It did happen very quickly, but also at the same time very organically,” Becket says of Prydz joining the CAA roster, “from o...
Porter Robinson Shares His Set From Secret Sky Virtual Fest, Announces Fall Bay Area Show
Robinson’s moment continued Monday (April 26) with the announcement that the second edition of his IRL festival, Second Sky, is taking place in the Bay Area this fall. Produced by Goldenvoice, the show will happen at Berkeley’s Cesar E. Chavez Park on September 18-19, with Robinson as the headliner and additional artists to be announced in the coming weeks. While the event has not yet addressed COVID protocols, a press release notes that Second Sky 2021 moved to a larger venue after the debut 2019 event sold out quickly. Second Sky debuted in June 2019, with a lineup featuring Robinson, Anamanaguchi, Cashmere Cat, Nina Las Vegas, Madeon and others. Robinson has been working on the live show for Nurture for the better part of the year, telling Billboard that while...
How Porter Robinson Found ‘The Confidence I Used To Have’ To Finish His Long-Awaited Second Album
The album’s punchy, soaring lead single, “Get Your Wish,” arrived in early 2020, with a second, “Something Comforting,” following on March 10, just as much of the world went into lockdown. Originally intended for a September 2020 release date, Nurture was pushed back due to the pandemic, giving Robinson additional time to more or less remake the project. He wrote new songs, replaced existing music and expanded the album from 11 to 14 tracks. Writing on a piano, he composed, recorded and sang every song himself, pitching up his vocals to often sound childlike and feminine — an effect he was relieved to find out can be recreated in real time when he sings during future live performances. Robinson performed his only set of 2020 during his livestream festival, Secret Sky, a 14-h...
EDC Las Vegas 2021 Is Pushed Back to October: ‘We Can’t Take That Risk’
“We just had a meeting in Las Vegas this past Friday with police, fire, medical, and other agencies involved with EDC to plan out details surrounding the event,” the statement continues. “However, today, Clark County (home of EDC & the Las Vegas Motor Speedway) passed a reopening plan that requires 60% of their residents to be vaccinated before restrictions over large scale gatherings such as EDC can be lifted. It might happen in time, it might not. Either way, we can’t take that risk.” Read the complete statement below. Rotella goes on to note that the event, which typically draws 125,000 people per day and features a lineup of hundreds of artists, was in the midst of being built, with “over 40 trucks en route to the Las Vegas Motor Speedway from all over...
Aloe Blacc Reflects on Unreleased Avicii Collabs in Live Tribute to Late Producer
Upon this meeting, Bergling shared a song with Blacc called “Black and Blue,” which was written by Mac Davis, the recently deceased country legend who’d also contribute to “Wake Me Up.” While “Black and Blue” was never released, Blacc did perform it live during Avicii’s iconic 2013 performance at Miami’s Ultra Music Festival, where the debut of “Wake Me Up” was famously booed by the audience. “We got onstage and the whole audience is expecting exactly what they’d seen all day before — lasers and confetti cannons and smoke and pyro and girls in bikinis dancing on turntables,” Blacc recalled of that show. “Tim came out with three to four musicians, and we kind of just performed live music at an ED...
