Dance
20 Questions With Kerri Chandler: How An Obsession With the Club World’s Best Sound Systems Forged the Icon’s Latest Album
Kerri Chandler is an innovator. The legendary DJ and producer, who is looking at 30 years of house music in his rearview, is an out-of-the-box thinker who doesn’t see limitations, just new frontiers. Explore Explore See latest videos, charts and news See latest videos, charts and news Case in point, his latest album, the 24-song Spaces and Places — his first since 2008’s Computer Games. Space and Places was not created in Chandler’s elaborate home studio in New Jersey — which is on par with any commercial studio, and leaves quite a few of those marquee locations in its dust. Instead, over the course of two years, Chandler traveled around the globe, recording the songs for Space and Places at clubs in various cities. Printworks and Ministry of Sound in London, The Warehouse Project in Manch...
‘This Is the Most Special Thing That’s Ever Happened to Me’: Watch an Exclusive Mini-Doc in Queer Producer Wreckno’s Homecoming Show at Electric Forest
In June of 2012, a wide-eyed Brandon Wisniski stepped out of his older brother’s car and into their future. “I didn’t have a tent, I didn’t really have a plan,” Wisniski says. “I was just like, ‘We are going to Electric Forest,’ and it was the best experience I ever had in my life at that point.” This past June, on the 10-year anniversary of that fateful leap, the producer-rapper-DJ now known to fans around the world as Wreckno returned to Electric Forest — but this time, their older brother didn’t turn around and go home after dropping them off at the edge of the campgrounds. Explore See latest videos, charts and news See latest videos, charts and news Instead, the younger Wisniski pulled their brother and mom with them on stage to perform a full-on live show with vocals, chor...
USC’s All-Black Majorette Dance Team Responds to Online Outrage
HipHopWired Featured Video Source: Chris Millard/Warner Bros. / Chris Millard/Warner Bros. The Cardinal Divas were formed out of desire for a safe space for young Black women at the predominantly white University of Southern California. USC junior Princess Isis Lang told The Huffington Post that she had been dancing on majorette teams since middle school and that she wanted to bring some of those experiences into her college life. “I didn’t see a space for Black women, so I created one,” Lang said. “Black people deserve to be seen any and everywhere. They also deserve to take their culture everywhere.” Related Stories However, when Lang posted a video clip of the team performing at the USC vs. Fresno football game last month—she was not prepared for the backlash. The post quick...
Defected Records’ New Owner Wez Saunders On Protecting The Label’s Legacy: I’m Not Here To Reinvent The Wheel’
On a late summer morning in London, Wez Saunders walked into work at the Defected Records headquarters and greeted his staff as he has for years. But on this otherwise normal day, something felt different: “Just for a split second,” Saunders recalls, “it was like, ‘Wow, I own this now.’” On August 23, Defected announced that its founder, Simon Dunmore, was stepping down as CEO, with Saunders, who has been with the label in various roles since 2014, acquiring the music company and all its subsidiaries. (Dunmore will stay on in a new role as A&R consultant.) Though Saunders had worked closely with Dunmore in running Defected’s day-to-day operations, there’s a pressure in taking over a label with so much history. When Dunmore launched Defected in 1999, its first release, Soulsearche...
Portola Festival Organizers Address Crowd Rush Incident: ‘A Minimal, Isolated Issue’
San Francisco’s Portola Festival at the city’s Pier 80 experienced a crowd issue Saturday (Sept. 24) when a large group of people rushed an early evening set by English producer Fred Again. The incident at the site occurred around 5 p.m. on the festival’s opening day. Video shared to social media shows members of the crowd jumping over the barricade surrounding the event’s Warehouse stage, a large enclosed space with two separate entrances for general admission and VIP attendees. The crowd waiting to get in through the GA entrance began gathering outside the Warehouse roughly 30 minutes before Fred Again’s set was scheduled to begin. As the crowd ballooned in size, a large throng of people bottlenecked at the GA entrance, with many of them unable to get inside and with some membe...
Is Portola the Best U.S. Electronic Festival Lineup of the Year? The Event’s Creator on a Show Six Years In The Making
This weekend’s debut Portola festival in San Francisco took six years to make happen. Launching tomorrow (September 24) at the city’s Pier 80, the two-day event was conceived by Danny Bell, VP Talent Buyer for AEG Presents in San Francisco, who came up with the concept after a 2016 music-fueled traipse through Europe’s electronic hubs. Bell had just left his job as Talent Buyer for HARD Events in Los Angeles, where he’d worked before after graduating from USC. (“I graduated on a Friday and was full time [at HARD] on a Monday,” he says.) With eight months off before he was due to start his new gig at AEG, he wanted to take the type of extended Euro trip many embark on after college. Explore See latest videos, charts and news See latest videos, charts and news “Lucky for me, I was 27 and I h...
Marshmello Is Remixing ‘Monday Night Football’ Theme Song as ESPN’s NFL Music Curator
ESPN has enlisted Marshmello ahead of the 2022-23 NFL season to remix the classic Monday Night Football theme song. The helmeted DJ will release the first-ever remix of the “Heavy Action” theme song on Monday night’s (Sept. 12) NFL broadcast across ESPN, ABC, ESPN2 and ESPN+, during the season opener between the Denver Broncos and Seattle Seahawks at 8 p.m. ET. “Working with ESPN is a dream come true as Monday Night Football and the NFL have been a part of my life ever since I can remember,” Marshmello said in a statement. “Having the opportunity to put my own spin on an iconic song that NFL fans everywhere recognize was an amazing opportunity.” Explore Explore See latest videos, charts and news See latest videos, charts and news Kevin Wilson, creative music director for ESPN, added, “Our ...
Hear Exclusive DAY.MVS XL Sets From Purple Disco Machine, DJ Minx, Vintage Culture & More
The second annual DAY.MVS XL went down in San Diego, Calif., earlier this month, and we’ve got the music to prove it. Produced by the same crew that puts on San Diego’s longstanding festival — and happening at the city’s Waterfront Park, where CRSSD also goes down — DAY.MVS XL 2022 hosted a lineup including Eric Prydz, Duke Dumont, Spencer Brown, Nastia, Dixon and Claptone, with 27 acts altogether playing over two stages during the weekend event. Like CRSSD before it, DAY.MVS XL is a boutique festival that offers an alternative to larger, more commercialized events, with its manageable scale, discerning lineups, and down-to-earth vibe making it a destination for mature dance fans looking to get into the groove outside the confines of a club or mega-fest. Explore See latest videos, charts a...
Zedd & Maren Morris Return With Bouncy New Collab ‘Make You Say’: Stream It Now
Four years after their debut collab “The Middle” became a massive crossover hit, Zedd and Maren Morris are back with a new track. “Make You Say” is a light dance-pop jam on which Morris delivers singsong lyrics about how much her ex is going to miss her over Zedd’s bouncy, effervescent production. The song is a collaboration with production duo Beauz, who are brothers Bernie and Johan Yang. Hear to the song below. “I started working on this record with Beauz about three or four years ago,” says Zedd. “We went back and forth slowly, refining the production over the years, and then Charlie and I got in the studio and wrote the topline for the track. Maren recorded a demo of it and sounded phenomenal, so I met her in Nashville, and we recorded the final vocal to ‘Make You Say’ and she took th...
Maren Morris & Zedd Tease a Follow-Up to ‘The Middle’
Is a new Maren Morris and Zedd collab on the way? The country singer and dance producer seemed to indicate that possibility on social media this weekend, where they both teased that a follow-up to their 2018 pop earworm “The Middle” (with Grey) might just be in the works. “Round 2?” Morris wrote Saturday (Aug. 13) on Twitter, where she shared a photo of the pair. Explore See latest videos, charts and news See latest videos, charts and news “Should we do it again?” Zedd asked in his own tweet, sharing the same picture. “The Middle” was a hit on the Hot Dance/Electronic Songs chart, where it held strong at No. 1 for an impressive 33 weeks. It also made it onto the top 10 on the Hot 100 chart, where it peaked at No. 5. “It was one of the fastest sessions I’ve ever done,” Zedd said of recordin...
Sylvan Esso Took Three Weeks to Make an Album That’s ‘More Real & About Us, Even if That Was Embarrassing’
In the thick of an L.A. heatwave, Amelia Meath and Nick Sanborn are posted up at a table on the roof of a Koreatown hotel on a Wednesday afternoon. She’s drinking wine (white), he’s drinking beer (in a can), and as the sun beats from the characteristically cloudless sky, waitstaff and patrons buzz around the patio while the pair — who together form the indie pop/electronic duo Sylvan Esso — day drink in the shade. Explore Explore See latest videos, charts and news See latest videos, charts and news It’s a very different version of Los Angeles than the one which facilitated the thing that’s brought Meath and Sanborn — a married couple based in Durham, North Carolina — back to town. In early 2022, they road-tripped across the U.S. to L.A. with plans to make music with friends. Then omicron c...
5 Essential Tracks From Calvin Harris’ ‘Funk Wav Bounces Vol. 2’
At first, it looked like a mirage. On the way to Coachella 2022, in the middle of the California desert, a sign appeared. No date, no details — just a billboard teasing that Scottish superstar producer and master collaborator Calvin Harris was on his way back. Explore See latest videos, charts and news See latest videos, charts and news On Friday (Aug. 5), the thirst that started that afternoon in the desert has been quenched. Six years after the first installment of Funk Wav Bounces — which debuted at No. 2 on the Billboard 200 and spent 42 weeks on the chart — Harris is back with Funk Wav Bounces Vol 2. In our singles-driven release cycle, Harris doesn’t need to make albums. He could surprise-drop funky, disco-inspired singles with A-list pop vocalists and still dominate every playlist a...
