Tiesto- I Am A Rockstar
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William Conn from Las Vegas nightclub The Joint at Hard Rock praised Tiesto for being ‘our classic rock growing up’, in the official trailer for Tiesto’s new In The Booth series, this week declaring “He is your Led Zeppelin. He is your Bon Jovi. He is your U2.”
Speaking to the New York Times the same week, the Dutch trance-pop icon coincidentally agreed.
“DJs are the new rock stars,” he decreed, “We’ve been saying it for years, but now you can really see it.” http://nyti.ms/AnyYS8
Paris Hilton Promises ‘Perfect Party Music’
International party girl Paris Hilton talked up her superstar DJ ambitions this week, telling FHM magazine she’ll be devoting her full attention to promoting her soon to be released second album.
“I have a huge passion for house music. It always has been my passion. I just haven’t been able to focus on it, because I have been doing reality TV for so long now,” the billionaire heiress claimed.
“I’ve been working on the album with lots of other top DJs for a while now and I think people will be really surprised. It’s very modern and very catchy; perfect party music.” (Digital Spy: http://bit.ly/AuNriq )
Christopher Lawrence’s Australian Error (Interview)
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Picking up numerous ‘Best American DJ’ awards in the middle of the last decade, Christopher Lawrence sparked surprise when he moved to Melbourne, Australia in 2008, just as America’s electronic music scene finally started taking off.
Returning last year, he admitted missing Melbourne’s coffee (‘probably the best in the world- the coffee in California is horrible’) though was otherwise happy to be back. One year on, he remains similarly grateful.
“Moving to Australia was an epic ‘Fail’. It was a bad career move as I was living fourteen hours away from my biggest market,” he admits.
“Touring was a disaster when I was based in Melbourne. I was never home and that really messed with my family. Moving back to Los Angeles was the best thing I ever did.”
As well as continually touring the world spinning his preferred flavour of progressive pumping trance, he’s also continuing to develop his label Pharmacy Music, through which he’s just launched a new compilation series.
Marketed with the catchphrase ‘You’ll never be embarrassed to admit that you like our trance’, the series offers ‘solid pumping trance designed for the dance floor’, though as the catchphrase indicates, not just any dance floor.
“We don’t care about superstar DJs and we don’t make cheesy music videos,” its accompany press release insists, “but we will rock you so hard that your teeth will chatter.”
Chatting to Skufff today, Christopher admits he’s far from impressed with the majority of his superstar DJ peers.
“The pop-dance scene is a pretty sad state of affairs and the worst part is that most of the DJs are pandering to the lowest common denominator,” he complains.
“All the genres have merged into one sound. You can go to any club or festival, close your eyes and you can’t tell the difference from one DJ to the next. They all sound the same and play the same tracks.”
“The lines have been blurred between he genres and everyone is playing the same trance-electro-dubstep-house sound,” he continues.
“It has made it difficult in some respects because people no longer go out to be blown away on the dance floor by music they have never heard before.
Instead, they want to hear all their favorite songs and if the DJ doesn’t play the hits they feel disappointed.”
Chris’ assessment of the blandness of America’s pop-dance favourites matches the even blunter views of British tech-house DJ Steve Lawler who, chatting to the Miami New Times this week, is equally frank (and reportedly ‘disgusted’).
“This electro-pop-dance that all the R&B artists are jumping on is the worst music I have ever heard in my whole life — cheap, no soul, no meaning,” Lawler snorts. “[It's] only made to make money.” (http://bit.ly/vRByzv )
Deadmau5 Still Not Dead
Pranksters edited Deadmau5’s Wikipedia page to claim the producer had died from ‘apparent alcohol intoxication’ this week, prompting a bemused response from Deadmau5 via Twitter.
“Once again, extremely disappointed by the insanely uncreative death rumor,” he Tweeted, “I thought we had all agreed on acid spitting koala’s skydiving and volcano?”
The Wikipedia entry published a detailed report of his demise, which said he died ‘a day after performing at the 2011 Spike Video Game Awards’.
“After friends attempted to enter his room but were unable to get a response, they reportedly called his phone, then asked management to open the door after he didn’t answer. They found him on the floor, not breathing. He was subsequently rushed to the emergency room and pronounced dead on arrival,” it read.
The report emerged months after David Guetta was similarly targeted by a death notice published on a fake press agency portal which suggested the French pop star was killed in a car crash in the US. (http://bit.ly/9DPq7Y )
“David Guetta died in a single vehicle crash on Route 80 between Morristown and Roswell. He was pronounced dead at the scene by paramedics responding to the vehicle accident and was identified by photo ID found on his body. Alcohol and drugs do not appear to have been a factor in this accident,” the report claimed.
“The service is expected to be a closed casket funeral due to the severe head trauma,” it added.
The false Guetta report remains online with an automatically updated date setting and has since been joined by an exact replica posting claiming Tiesto suffered the same fate.
Guetta dead? click for more
Jonty Skrufff: http://listn.to/JontySkrufff
Underworld Take on Tiesto @ the Olympics
British tech-house pioneers Underworld have been announced as music Directors for the opening ceremony of the London 2012 Olympic Games, taking on the role that Tiesto filled in 2004 when he DJed at the games in Athens.
Underworld duo Rick Smith and Karl Hyde will be working with Trainspotting film director Danny Boyle for next July’s prestige event and will be responsible for all the music in the globally televised three-hour ceremony, Olympic organizers revealed.
‘We want to leave people with a musical memory of the show rather than a purely visual one,” Karl Hyde said in a statement.
“It’s a great honour to be asked to do this and one we’re taking very seriously – it’s certainly not something we’ll get the chance to do again,” he added.
Though Tiesto’s appearance DJing at the opening ceremony in Athens in 2004, cemented his superstar DJ status, China was taking no chances in 2008, avoiding hiring any international DJs and instead issuing a raft of laws for locals.
“Fearful of humiliation in the eyes of the world if all does not go to plan, the government has not only clamped down on dissidents but has also gone to great lengths to ensure that everyone behaves properly,” the Sunday Times reported at the time,
“As well as a ban on spitting, scratching your head (they’ve also banned) wearing sandals without socks,’ the Times added.
Jonty Skrufff: http://listn.to/JontySkrufff
Mason’s Perfect Window of Attention (interview)
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“There’s nothing more frustrating than having the idea that you’re making cool stuff, but nobody is listening to it. From Exceeder onwards we had a big following checking out all our new records, and coming to our shows.”
Mason member Iason Chronis’s first big breakthrough came from touring (and playing violin) with Tiesto in 2004, months before bandmate Coen Berrier had a UK top 10 pop hit, as Bhangra Knights (the number 7 hit Husan).
The same year they released their first tracks together- the Helikopter EP- followed by remixes for Don Diablo and Malente, before their breakthrough track- Exceeder- was snapped up by Great Stuff.
Instantly catchy though superbly produced, the track became an immediate crossover club hit and also serendipitously caught the attention of a novice Australian mash-up producer called ‘’Tallngoofy’ who on 23 June 2006, posted a rough bootleg combining Exceeder with the acapella from Princess Superstar’s Perfect.
Six months later, when Ministry of Sound released the mash-up officially it went to number 3 in the British pop charts immediately, and was licensed to the trailer for Sacha Baron Cohen’s Bruno, confirming Mason’s status as established international producers.
“Of course it made a difference financially,” Iason agrees. “But at the end of the day the biggest difference was that the two of us could now fully focus on music full-time, which we have been doing ever since, without being afraid of the gas bill. The rest is unimportant. It also created a window of attention for our music.”
“From Exceeder onwards we had a big following checking out all our new records, and coming to our shows, which is really rewarding- without trying to sound too Oprah,” he laughs.
“The fact that people turn up when you play somewhere has an effect on your DJ fee too obviously. We didn’t want to make a few hundred new records just like Exceeder, but took the opportunity to work even harder and try to make different, original records.”
Five years on they’ve cemented their reputation as A list producers and DJs still further, remixing both for credible artists including Zoo Brazil, Disco Of Doom and Jesse Rose as well as the likes of Moby and Robyn.
Rather than resting on their laurels, however they’ve recently raised their game dramatically introducing a fully integrated sound light and visual system that they use for every performance. Hi tech and hugely impressive, the show delivers a Chemical Brothers style edge to their shows, raising the bar for DJs when more and more are replacing beat matching with sync buttons.
“Why did we develop this system? (known as the ‘Baboon Booth’) We just wanted to do stuff a bit different,” Iason explains.
“There are too many DJs out there (duh!),” he chuckles, “And there are too many live shows that aren’t much more than a guy with glasses staring into his laptop while stroking a controller.”
