New York Times recently wrote a really cool article on EDM protegees such as Zedd, Madeon, and Porter Robinson. Read the full post after the jump!
The roar of 10,000 dance-music fans echoed backstage at Red
Rocks Amphitheater near here one evening this month as Skrillex, the
24-year-old prince of dubstep, gave a brotherly bearhug to his protégé and
opening act, Zedd.
Two years ago Zedd, whose real name is Anton Zaslavski, was
making beats in obscurity in Germany. Now, riding the dance world’s accelerated
career track, he’s recording with Lady Gaga and Justin Bieber, and the
crowd at Red Rocks obediently followed his every fist-pumping dance command.
“It’s crazy,” said Zedd, who is 22 but could pass for 16 if
not for the fuzz along his jaw. “I’ve always been making music. But suddenly
I’m on the other side of the world touring with people like Deadmau5 and
Skrillex.”
To most people over 30 those names might not mean much. But
electronic dance music, or E.D.M., is having its day as the sound of young
America. Festivals like Ultra and Electric Daisy Carnival draw crowds of
100,000 or more, and dance beats fill high-rolling nightclubs up
and down the Las Vegas Strip. Forbes recently ranked the annual
earnings of top D.J.’s, topped by Tiësto with $22 million. Naturally the
music industry is taking notice.
“The record labels now are all saying, ‘We’ve got to find
the next Skrillex,’ ” said Gary Richards, the promoter behind the Hard
festival franchise.
Aside from Zedd, who was courted by Jimmy Iovine of
Interscope Records (Eminem, Lady Gaga, U2), the contenders include D.J.
prodigies like Madeon and Porter Robinson, and the Chicago group Krewella,
which just signed with Columbia.
Yet the rise of E.D.M. also reflects the shifting ground of
the music industry, in which big record labels are no longer the primary career
makers, and a young, hyperdigital generation of acts has its eyes on more
distant and prestigious prizes like film scoring. Their hoped-for career
trajectory would be not unlike that of, say, Trent Reznor of Nine Inch Nails,
but accomplished in a year or two instead of decades.
“It’s not the ’90s; we have the Internet,” said Mr.
Robinson, 20, who lives with his parents in Chapel Hill, N.C. “Record labels
are not as important or influential as they used to be. They’re less capable of
puppet-mastering the whole scene.”
Mr. Robinson, along with Zedd, Skrillex and star D.J.’s like
Tiësto, David Guetta, Martin Solveig and Steve Aoki, are on the bill for
the Electric Zoo festival
from Friday to next Sunday at Randalls Island in New York.
Zedd’s rise is typical of the new wave, even if his talent
is extraordinary. Growing up in Kaiserslautern, Germany, he studied classical
piano and played drums in a rock band before tinkering with electronica, and
developed an intricate variant of the electro house style. He is a
compositional wonk, starting
his songwriting at the pianoand then translating chords and melodies into
the computerized zips and skull-rattling bass that fill a dance floor.
“What I don’t like to hear in music is something has not
been thought through, that a sound is just there randomly,” he said in an
interview before his show. “I want to make sure that every single little noise
that’s in my song is there because it’s supposed to be there.”
In 2010 Zedd won two remix contests sponsored by the digital
music store Beatport — E.D.M.’s iTunes — and, in a blind pitch, sent a track to
Skrillex. Struck by its sophistication, Skrillex used the track in his D.J. set
that night and brought Zedd under his wing.
“We both come from a band background, where a lot of the
songs are based on riffs, and you can hear that in the production,” said
Skrillex (real name: Sonny Moore), whose own style is a bombardment of thumps,
crashes and sonic squiggles, like a futuristic instrument picking up bits of
alien dance music.
Singles, remixes and inspired oddities by Zedd followed,
among them a remake of the theme to the vintage Nintendo video game The Legend of Zelda. Interscope
offered him a studio at the label’s offices in Santa Monica, Calif., and teamed
him up with various acts on its roster. “Jimmy threw the building at him,” said
Dave Rene, an artists and repertory executive at Interscope who is also one of
Zedd’s two managers.
He toured Asia with Lady Gaga in the spring, signed with
Interscope in May, and his debut album, “Clarity,” is due on Oct. 9. Though no
one will confirm it, it is an open secret in the industry that Zedd has also
been recording with Lady Gaga.
Mr. Robinson and Madeon — a dazzlingly skilled 18-year-old
French D.J. — have also had what seem to be superfast beginnings. Just a year
out of high school, Mr. Robinson has already toured widely and done all the
right remixes, and he boasts about his earning power on the road. (When asked
for specifics about money, though, he said, “I don’t think my dad would want me
talking about that publicly.”)
Their ascent has been sped along by online incubators like
Beatport, where D.J.’s essentially sell songs to other D.J.’s. A hot new track,
whether by a brand-name producer or a 16-year-old with a laptop, can instantly
turn up on playlists around the world and ricochet through social media, then
make its way to Hollywood, Madison Avenue and all the scattered scouts of the
music industry.
“The dance-music market is a microcosm of what’s happening
to media in general,” said Matthew Adell, Beatport’s chief executive. “It’s
becoming less localized, it’s becoming more mobile, and it’s becoming more
global in terms of people accepting art and commerce and communication from
other parts of the planet.”
It’s hard not to see boy-genius signs everywhere here. Mr.
Robinson had never seen a live D.J. until the night before his own first gig,
at the age of 15. Madeon, a k a Hugo Leclercq, performs in a dark blazer that
only partly conceals his tiny frame. But for E.D.M. purists, chops trump
everything, and a video
showing Madeon’s prestidigitation on the Novation Launchpad — an audio
control panel with 64 blinking buttons — made him a sensation.
Mr. Robinson argues that his generation’s seemingly
instantaneous arrival is an illusion caused by the relatively recent embrace of
dance music by mainstream American audiences.
“If you’ve been writing dance music for a long time, like me
and Zedd and Skrillex have, you’re well positioned to take advantage of this
scene,” he said. “We’ve been paying dues since we were young teenagers, but all
of a sudden our music is wanted. So that’s what creates the impression of a
quick rise.”
For Zedd the migration from rock was an eye-opening change
toward a less competitive and infinitely more popular genre. Despite lots of
touring in Europe, he said, his band’s album sold a total of 888 copies; at his
first night opening for Lady Gaga, in Seoul, South Korea, he played for 60,000
people.
“When I played in a band, people just stand there and look
at you and criticize what they didn’t like,” he said. “But if you watch a D.J.
show, people go crazy from beginning to end. Say what you want against D.J.’s,
but you can’t deny that the energy level in the audience is for the most part
far above what rock bands have.”
Outside the stage door at Red Rocks two 16-year-old boys
from Kansas City, Kan., waited patiently for Zedd’s autograph, and finally got
it, as their hero made his way to a meet and greet with radio programmers.
“I first listened to him when he was on tour with Skrillex
last year,” said one of them, Justin Tresner. “I watched him on YouTube live, and
the lights and the bass were just amazing. He also remixed the Zelda song, and
Zelda’s, like, my favorite video game.”
Where all of this fits within the traditional music industry
is unclear. Record companies still play an important role, but the relationship
has changed from the days when a label controlled most aspects of an artist’s
career. Short-term, high-value record contracts are common, a sign both of how
attractive E.D.M. hits can be as well as of a certain ambivalence about that
genre’s long-term prospects.
Last year Universal paid an extraordinary $750,000 to
release “Levels,” a hit single by the Swedish D.J. Avicii, without the standard
contractual options for more material. On the other hand, Avicii, who is 22,
just did an endorsement deal with Ralph Lauren that his manager, Ash Pournouri,
described as open ended.
Another example is Krewella, a trio of two singing sisters,
Jahan and Yasmine Yousaf, and a male noisemaker, Kris Trindl. The group
exploded onto the scene this year in all the latter-day ways — YouTube, Beatport and the
audio site Soundcloud —
and Columbia signed it to a deal that includes albums but not the other rights
that labels often demand of new acts, like a share of touring or merchandising
income.
“Maybe it was different 10 years ago, but nowadays the
labels want you to build your own fan base, create your own style, your own
sound,” said Jahan Yousaf. “It feels really amazing to be completely in control
of your music and your branding, but also have the support of the label.”
E.D.M.’s business outlook is much debated in the industry,
and some acts, like Zedd and Madeon, are looking beyond a career as simply a
performing artist, to producing other acts and working in film. (Skrillex is
already scoring for Disney.)
“It is risky long-term to base your career around a narrow
style that may turn out to be a fad,” Madeon wrote in an e-mail. “I’m currently
producing records for other bands and artists that are not in the electronic
world, and it’s extremely fun and fulfilling. It’s something I’ll probably do
more of in the future.”
Earlier in the day Zedd and Skrillex visited Beatport’s
Denver offices, mingled with employees and checked out the staff D.J. station.
In his backpack Zedd carried a laptop, spare computer drives and a tangle of
cables: all the gear he would need to perform.
Not long ago he had never been away from home for more than
two weeks. Then it was six weeks, then two months, then six months. He, and his
parents, are still coming to grips with the frenzied pace of his new life, he
said.
“But I would never complain,” Zedd added. “My biggest dream
is coming true.” Then he made his way to Red Rocks.
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