Tag: EDM

Features, Print

Michal Menert: Things Burn Down

July 12, 2022

Michal Menert has been thinking about fire.

The fires that have burned vast tracts of land near his childhood home in Colorado and not far from his former home in California. The fire that burned a warehouse full of his merch in Detroit last December. A fire that burned down the house in Fort Collins where he used to live with his bandmates in 2004. And all of the other metaphorical fires that have raged through his life over the years.

“Things burn down and then you watch the flowers grow back out of the cracks,” Menert reflected in an interview with BandWagon.

The theme has permeated the Pretty Lights cofounder’s music in recent months.

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Features, Print

Dynohunter – A Constant Evolution

July 3, 2018

Boulder-based Dynohunter never want to completely fit in with what’s going on around them. Cutting a way for themselves through the festival and EDM scene across the country, they have opened for legends such as Infected Mushroom, Papadosio, and Bonobo. A household name amongst the Colorado festival circuit, each year their name climbs higher and higher on the line-up posters. We spoke with the Dynohunter guys ahead of their gig at ARISE about all the things that make them tick.
“We love that house and techno seem to be catching on with a larger festival and jam audience. Being born out of the jam scene and gravitating towards house and techno ourselves, we have helped others see how, for example, a DJ is able to weave together a 2-hour set and take the audience on a ride in a similar way to a jam band.”

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Music, Reviews

Album Review: Vektroid – Seed & Synthetic Earth

January 1, 2018

Vaporwave is probably one of the most niche music genres in existence, as well as the only one that the Internet could claim as its own. Mostly found on Bandcamp, Vaporwave is a nostalgia-tinged, remix-heavy genre of ambient electronic music that sets out to recreate mall music/elevator music of the 1980s and 1990s. Its name is a take-off of Vaporware, a tech industry term for hardware that never really existed outside of tech demo and trade shows. And the most prominent artist of Vaporwave is Vektroid.

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The Floozies– Brothers on a Funk Mission

January 9, 2017

Mark and Matt Hill of The Floozies are two brothers on a funk mission. Since their first show as The Floozies in 2008, The Hill brothers have taken that mission around the world, sharing their brand of EDM everywhere from house parties to sold out festivals alongside so many industry greats. Recently, we spoke with The Floozies about the things that make their world go around.

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Music, Print, Reviews

Album Review: MISCOMUNICADO – Fun-Land Express

September 8, 2016

Take the hooks from the best music of the 1960s, hand them over to an EDM outfit with a couple good singers/guitarists, and you would get Fun-Land Express, the fifth album from MISCOMUNICADO, a Fort Collins-based EDM/Psychadelic Rock fusion band that originates from Philadelphia, Pennsylvania. They call their music “Future Classic Rock,” and the artists they also like, they only answer “Everything.”

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Features, Music, Print

The Evolution of Derek Smith: Pretty Lights Still Shining

August 3, 2015

Fort Collins, Colorado native Derek Smith, better known as Pretty Lights, started making beats in high school, but eventually found himself at the forefront of the electronic music scene. His first album, 2006’s Taking Up Your Precious Time, 2008’s Passing Up the City Skies and 2009’s Passing by Behind Your Eyes revealed Smith’s ability to seamlessly sew together a blanket of sonic textures, but 2013’s A Color Map of the Sun uncovered his aptitude for actually composing every single musical note of each track. The 34-year-old producer is once again on tour and ascends on the Red Rocks stage August 8 and 9. He took some time to discuss the severity of drug use at EDM shows, the recording process and his outlandish height.

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Features, Music, Print

All About the Bass

December 23, 2014

“I’ve seen a lot of personal friends lives be damaged, destroyed or ended through making the wrong decisions with drug use,” Lorin Ashton says. “I’ve also seen some amazing transformations happen from very limited and responsible experimentation. I want to be ultra careful about not condoning anything without expressing how important it is to be safe and aware.”

Ashton, better known by his stage moniker Bassnectar, is often at the helm of massive EDM parties and has undoubtedly seen all sorts of debauchery in the crowd. However, at age 36, he’s learned valuable lessons over the years— not only as a musician, but also simply as a human being.

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