Dance
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The Do Lab, organizers of its flagship festival Lightning In a Bottle and producers of its own stage at Coachella since 2004, dropped its 2024 Coachella lineup on Thursday (March 7).
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On weekend one of the festival, The Do Lab will host artists including U.K. drum ‘n’ bass heroes Chase & Status; a DJ set from L.A. star Channel Tres; experimental electronic heroes Hudson Mohawke b2b Nikki Nair; bass producer Hamdi; Alesso playing one of his deep house BODY HI sets; Mia Moretti, whose played other events including the Met Gala afterparty and the Barbie movie premiere; and house mainstay Anna Lunoe.
One weekend two, the Do Lab bill includes DJ Tennis, rising house star HoneyLuv, experimental producers CocoRosie, artists selected by U.K. party series HE.SHE.THEY. and sets by more than 20 other DJs.
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This crew of artists joins the already robust electronic lineup at Coachella in April, with artists including Justice, Gesaffelstein, Orbital, Peggy Gou, John Summit, Dom Dolla, Anyma, Jungle, Charlotte de Witte, Grimes and DJ Snake all playing. In total, more than 60 dance acts are on the Coachella lineup, with the Do Lab artists bringing another heavy dose of the genre. Coachella 2024 happens over two weekends, April 12-14 and 19-21.
For The Do Lab, Coachella is part of the run-up to its own flagship festival, Lightning In a Bottle, which returns to Southern California’s Buena Vista Lake this Memorial Day weekend. The very buzzy lineup for that event includes James Blake, M.I.A., Fatboy Slim, CloZee and the summer’s only U.S. festival date from Skrillex.
See The Do Lab’s complete Coachella weekend one and two lineups below.
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Samantha Poulter had her first child, a daughter named Genie, in October of 2022. In a way, the Australia-born, Berlin-based electronic music producer is about to again give birth. Due March 22 through Because Music, her debut album, Mother, is 11-tracks of cerebral, underground-leaning house music that contains elements of the many facets of femininity. The music is no doubt a product of Poulter’s transition into the album’s titular role.
“Since becoming a mother, I feel this overwhelming sense of womanhood and sisterhood,” she says. It makes sense then that her album is populated by female collaborators including Rochelle Jordan, whose velvet vocals are featured on the lush “Promises” and Miami-based singer MJ Nebreda, who brings an alluring heat to “Every lil.”
“If hearing the story about my transformation during motherhood inspires someone to look deep within themselves and think about how they want to grow and transform,” Poulter says of her vision for the project, “that will make this album successful to me.”
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Foundation
Samantha Poulter took piano lessons as a child but “didn’t like that formal type of training,” she says. Yet she dreamed of being a performer, taking inspiration from Michael Jackson and 1990s-era British pop star Peter Andre. She had a keen ear from a young age, too: “I’d be like, ‘I would do this differently,’ and have ideas about how music should sound without the training to communicate that or create it myself.” That changed when she started producing electronic music in her early 20s, weaving high school-era influences like Destiny’s Child and Aaliyah into her cerebral productions.
Discovery
Poulter and her husband, DJ-producer Tom McAlister, started producing electronic music together in 2016 when she “felt there was a lull” in what she was listening to. She asked him if they could “have a go at making something together that reflects what I want to hear,” and in 2019, she released her self-titled debut EP as Logic1000. It included “DJ Logic Please Forgive Me,” which Four Tet played in his 2019 Coachella set, instantly raising her profile. “That was a huge moment for me,” she recalls, “and it snowballed from there.” She was soon enlisted to officially remix Flume, Christine and the Queens, Major Lazer and Caribou, leading to her own Coachella set in 2022. Come March 22, Logic1000 will release her debut album, Mother, which was supported by a recent Boiler Room set filmed in Melbourne, Australia.
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Future
Now based in Berlin, Poulter gave birth to her daughter, Genie, in 2022. The experience of pregnancy and parenting deeply influenced the lush, intimate Mother. Poulter, who has always been candid about her mental health, found the early postpartum period challenging: “I was up and down and so hormonal, but also had this insane energy to achieve things and create this album,” she says. She ended up in a period of burnout, taking 10 months off touring, but feels prepared to dive back in. “Once I realized that this is actually my dream job, it gave me the drive, energy and courage to just do it,” she says, “but with that practical advice of it being on my own terms.”
A version of this story originally appeared in the March 9, 2024, issue of Billboard.
HARD Summer is returning this August with a lineup featuring heavyweights including U.K. stars Disclosure and Jamie xx, Philadelphia-born bass phenom Subtronics, Chris Lake and FISHER performing as their side project Under Construction, longtime pals REZZ and deadmau5 performing as REZZMAU5, the summer’s only U.S. summer festival performance from Major Lazer, house music pioneer Kerri […]
French electronic duo AIR will bring audiences to space this fall during a North American tour honoring the 25-year anniversary of their beloved 1998 debut, Moon Safari.
The pair, Nicolas Godin and Jean-Benoît Dunckel, will play the album in its entirety during the 19-date tour, which starts Sept. 25 in Vancouver and ends Oct. 30 in Austin, Texas. See the complete schedule below.
Presale tickets go on sale March 7 at 10 a.m. local time, with general tickets on sale 10 a.m. local time on March 8. The tour will hit largely 2,000- to 5,000-capacity venues and follows AIR’s current sold-out European tour behind the anniversary. The tour announcement follows last Friday’s release of a demo version of Moon Safari‘s “New Stars in the Sky.”
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Released in January 1998, the album marked a breakout moment for the electronica genre and earned wide critical acclaim.
While making it, Godin says that “my obsession was to do something timeless, so I focused very hard not to put things in the music production that would date the album. And during the process, many times we felt we were visited by something magic, we felt blessed during some takes; and also when I was listening to the radio, I couldn’t figure how people were making hit singles. It was not in my skills so if you can’t make a hit, the best other option is to make a classic.”
“Before we decided to do this tour, we went to a rehearsal room for three days to see if it was technically possible to perform the entire album,” Godin continues, “and as soon as we started to play the first notes of ‘Kelly Watch the Stars’ or ‘La Femme d’Argent,’ we had a thrill.”
The tour will not feature Moon Safari vocalist Beth Hirsch, who helped forge the album’s dreamy, sexy atmosphere on “All I Need” and “You Make It Easy.” But Dunckel says the pair has “made some arrangements to deliver the soul of these tracks” through their use of a vocoder. “I think that the new arrangements are working on stage,” he continues. “We feel the singer singing without her singing.”
Reflecting on the album’s legacy, Godin says the soothing nature of the album is another reason it’s endured. “We are extremely blessed to have recorded this music, and to be able to share it with the audience so long after its release is a gift of life for us,” he says. “In these troubled times, it’s a nice time capsule from the last century when we were more innocent and optimistic.”
“I think this album is a little bit medicinal,” Dunckel adds. “It heals people’s wounds. Like the wounds I had at the time we made it. That’s what melancholic music does to you isn’t it? The melancholia into the music swallows the listener’s melancholia because the musician and the listener are talking to each other as in a therapy conversation or in a dream.”
Of the original tour behind the album, Dunckel recalls realizing the album “was really working when we toured in the U.S., and in Spain. People were really enjoying the shows and they were so happy to see us for real. I felt it in the audience voices.”
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Calvin Harris has cracked — kind of.
The Scottish producer was co-hosting the Zoe Ball Breakfast Show on BBC Radio 2 on Monday morning (March 4) when he revealed the unusual liquid that helps him stave off jet lag.
“I was on a British Airways flight only a couple of weeks ago, and the air hostess told me she’d never seen anybody crack eggs and pour them into their mouth in their seat before,” Harris told Bell. “But that was me. That’s what I do.”
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He went on to say that when he gets on a flight, he retrieves the six eggs he’s stashed in his carry-on bag, then consume the yolks. “I like to get rid of the white, so I just do the raw yolk,” he continued. “I find it gets rid of the jet lag.”
Harris also revealed that there’s no special trick to getting a half-dozen eggs on a commercial flight. “You just stick them in your bag,” he said. “I’m surprised they get through security because for me, that’s liquid. But it’s never, ever been flagged.”
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According to Medicine News Today, egg yolks are a bit of a “miracle” cure, as they’re dense with vitamins, protein and may help reduce blood pressure, boost the immune system and reduce vision problems.
It’s been a big few days for Harris, as over the weekend the producer won the 2024 Brit Award for best dance act, beating Fred again.., Romy, Becky Hill and Barry Can’t Swim. Harris was also nominated for best pop act and song of the year for his 2023 trance anthem “Miracle” with Ellie Goulding, with whom he performed at the ceremony.
“First of all, I want to dedicate this award to Danny Rampling’s Love Groove dance party,” Harris said in his acceptance speech, referencing the ’90s dance compilation series, then went on to say: “I want to thank Ellie Goulding, wherever she is. Ellie, I couldn’t be on this stage this year without you. What you brought to ‘Miracle’ was absolutely unbelievable. I couldn’t have done it with anybody else in this room, so thank you.”
Harris also thanked the songwriter BURNS, a frequent collaborator who worked on “Miracle,” as well as his wife, BBC Radio 1 presenter Vick Hope.
The mother of all U.S. dance festivals is coming back with a characteristic bang, as EDC Las Vegas has today (March 1) announced the lineup for its 2024 fest.
It’s a dizzying array of mostly every big name dance act in the world (minus a few exceptions), with EDC regulars deadmau5, Diplo, David Guetta, Kaskade, Alison Wonderland, Tiesto, FISHER, Alesso, Armin van Buuren, Dillon Francis, Carl Cox, Eric Prydz, John Summit, Valentino Khan, Seven Lions, Steve Aoki, Illenium, Paul van Dyk, Martin Garrix, DJ Snake, Zedd and many more all returning to the fest.
Four Tet, Peggy Gou and hard techno star Sara Landry will all make their EDC Las Vegas debuts this year. The event will also feature Subtronics, Mau P, Hamdi, Four Tet, HAAi, Dabin, Boyz Noize, Heidi Lawden and several hundred more artists spanning house, techno, tech house, EDM, hardstyle, bass and beyond. Get out your magnifying glass and check the complete lineup below.
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EDC Las Vegas 2024 happens at the Las Vegas Motor Speedway this May 17-19. The festival starts each day at dusk and wraps up at sunrise. Ticket for the 18+ event are on sale now.
EDC Las Vegas is the flagship festival from the Los Angeles-based Insomniac Events, a global leader in dance music live shows that celebrated its 30th anniversary last year. The festival hosts artists across nine stages, each typically featuring a different style of electronic music. A few of these stages — bionicJUNGLE, quantumVALLEY, bassPOD, wasteLAND, and neonGARDEN — will all be moved this year in order to create larger dancefloors and better crowd flow.
Organizers note that the festival’s 2024 theme is “#kineticCIRCLE” which a statement says will “celebrate the profound impact circles have on our lives – circles of time, circles of trust, and circles of community.”
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After scrubbing his Instagram account earlier Friday (March 1), Porter Robinson quickly clued fans in about why with the announcement that he’s releasing a new album, and that this project is ready to go.
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“The new album is done,” Robinson wrote on social media, where he also posted a photo of himself holding a large, pink iridescent star with faces spray painted onto it. The shot shows him in a black sweater with green undershirt and a green scarf, shaggy hair and a scowling face. It’s unclear if this image is related to the album’s cover art. The title of the project has not yet been announced.
That post was quickly followed by another, this one a video of Robinson in the studio playing a very elastic-y sounding electronic track with a rave light behind him and cartoon face — potentially a logo or cover art for the new project — layered over his head. The caption reads “#NEWMUSIC.”
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The forthcoming project will be Robinson’s third studio LP, following his 2021 album Nurture, which itself was a long-awaited followup to his 2014 classic Worlds. Both albums hit the Billboard 200, Worlds at No. 18 and Nurture at No. 52. In late 2017, Robinson also released a five-track EP under an alias, Virtual Self, an homage to late-’90s and early-’00s rave music. Its single “Ghost Voices” earned a Grammy Award nod for best dance recording.
“I thought about almost all of Nurture through the lens of pop music in the sense that it’s verse/chorus driven,” Robinson told Billboard in 2021, “but I was never thinking radio.” Still, Nurture single “Look At the Sky” not only hit dance radio, but crossed over, reaching No. 42 on Rock & Alternative Airplay.
Robinson has been active in the live scene over the last few years, putting on his Second Sky Festival in 2019 and 2022 and playing the mainstage at Coachella in 2023, along with a variety of other festivals. Hear his New Year’s Eve 2023 set from Countdown in Southern California here.
See Porter Robinson’s posts about his new music below:
This week in dance music: Daft Punk wax figures were debuted at Madame Tussauds New York, Movement revealed its full 2024 lineup, Creamfields did the same, Fred again.. sold a boatload of tickets very quickly in Australia, we talked to Charli XCX about her forthcoming album, BRAT, and talked to Kylie Minogue about being an all time legend.
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And of course, here are the best new dance tracks of the week.
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Fred again.., Lil Yachty & Overmono, “stayinit”
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For as much giddy brightness that exists within the Fred again.. oeuvre, melancholy and a certain wistfulness are also defining elements of his sound. His latest, “stayinit” falls into the territory of these latter moods, with Lil Yachty delivering the pleading and/or encouraging lyrics “you’ve got a life, stay in it,” over a siren synth tuned to a minor key and increasingly pummeling percussion that altogether builds to a sort of hypnotically spooky place. The track is a collaboration with U.K. duo Overmono and was debuted during a pop-up show from the three acts at New York’s Knockdown Center on February 9. “stayinit” lands amid Fred’s continued world domination, with the producer selling 100,000 tickets to six arena shows in Australia in just a few hours earlier this week. The tour promoter reported that over a million people were in the queue to try to get get seats.
Gessafelstein, “Hard Dreams”
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“I’m your slave, and you’re my queen,” French vocalist Yan Wagner declares via chantlike vocals on Gessaffelstein’s latest. “I picture ourselves in a Hollywood dream.” Any dream with the mood conjured on this track would be an intense (but not necessarily unpleasant) one, with “Hard Dreams” getting into a darkly swaggering, Depeche Mode zone that feels like a natural extension of the French producer’s historically dark, heavy, deeply cool catalog. The track is the lead single from Gesaffelstein’s forthcoming Gamma — his third studio LP and first since 2019’s Hyperion — out March 29, with a performance at Coachella to follow in April.
Diplo & Sharam feat. Pony, “Anthem”
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Diplo delivers one of his best in a minute with the hella ravey “Anthem.” Securely in the pocket of the underground vibe that his house label Higher Ground has been championing since its 2019 launch, the track is a collaboration with Iranian producer Sharam (of Deep Dish fame) and Canadian rapper Pony, whose breezy flow and soulful melodies about the straightforward joy of being, as he says, “hiiiiiigh,” are the secret sauce here. The accompany video, featuring a roomful of ravers in their best Y2K redux fits, was shot in Montreal.
LP Giobbi & hermixalot, “How Deep Is Your Love”
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LP Giobbi kicks of Women’s History Month with FEMME HOUSE Volume 2, a compilation of music by artists united under her FEMME HOUSE brand. An active and ongoing champion for the representation of female, gender nonbinary and underrepresented groups within the dance scene, on “How Deep Is Your Love” LP delivers one of the hard-hitting but nuanced, emotionally uplifting, psychedelia inflected and altogether totally soulful piano house bangers that are her signature, with vocals from FEMME HOUSE co-founder (and power-lunged singer) hermixalot. “2% of producers are female,” LP says in a statement, “and this compilation highlights some of my favorite female and gender-expansive producers/artists that are changing the game right now.” The compilation is out via Insomniac Records.
SG Lewis & Chloe Caillet, “Costa”
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SG Lewis launches his new label Forever Days — positioned in a statement as a home for “club-focused productions made strictly for the dancefloor and a place to champion music by artists that he loves” — with a song that is… exactly one of those. Made with New York City producer Chloé Caillet, “Costa” is three and half minutes of peaktime house bliss, characterized by the same brightness and cool that defines much of Lewis’ catalog.
Creamfields 2024 has announced its complete lineup.
Leading the bill are a flurry of A-list electronic artists including dance pop king Calvin Harris, local legend Fatboy Slim, progressive house leader Eric Prydz, global star of the moment Peggy Gou, the U.K. legends on a current hot streak Chase & Status, techno leader Charlotte de Witte and rising star Eliza Rose. London-based producer Michael Bibi will also play one of his first shows back after his December announcement that he’d beat cancer.
Additionally, the lineup includes many of the dance world who’s who, like Armin van Buuren, Alesso, Fisher, Gorgon City, Hardwell, John Summit, Martin Garrix, Solomun, Steve Angello, Tiësto and many more. See the complete featured artist lineup below. The festival will also feature many more local and rising acts, bringing the total artist count to roughly 300.
The festival, which typically hosts 80,000 fans over three days, happens in Daresbury, England this August 22-25. Ticket start at £240 ($300)and are on sale now.
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In 2024 Creamfields will debut a 30,000 capacity indoor mainstage, which the event claims will be the world’s largest indoor festival superstructure.
Creamfields launched in 1998 as a one-day electronic music festival. The event’s parent company, Cream Holdings Limited, was acquired by Live Nation in 2012 as the music industry rushed to invest in electronic music properties amid the EDM boom.
In a statement at the time, Live Nation president/CEO Michael Rapino said that “With this acquisition, Live Nation further establishes its position in electronic music and expands its concert platform.”
Courtesy of Creamfields
From “I Love It” and “Fancy” to “Speed Drive” and “Boom Clap,” Charli XCX has been upending pop music with boisterous production and gigantic hooks for over a decade. On Thursday (Feb. 29), the Grammy nominee officially launched her newest era with the delightfully rambunctious “Von Dutch” and its accompanying music video. “I’m just living […]