genre dance
This week in dance music: deadmau5 and Rezz graced the cover of Billboard Canada, talking about their longstanding collaboratove project, Rezzmau5. In the story deadmau5 also spoke about selling his catalog to Create Music Group earlier this year, saying that “it was time to just let it go.” Elsewhere, Italian techno producer Deborah de Luca […]
Her Madgesty has spoken. Madonna took to social media on Thursday (June 5) to give fans insight into her forthcoming EDM remix album Veronica Electronica. “Making my Ray of Light album was a seminal moment in my life as an artist,” the Queen of Pop wrote on her Instagram Stories, referencing the mystical, techno-fueled 1998 […]
Disclosure will perform a run of North American live shows this fall, the duo announced Thursday (June 5.) The newly announced shows piggyback a run of previously announced DJ sets from the Lawrence brothers. The newly announced shows include dates at both indoor and outdoor venues, including Forest Hills in New York, the Santa Barbara […]
Tiësto and Sexyy Red are revving their engines with the just-released collab “OMG!”
The slinky song, in which Sexyy Red opines about maxing out credit cards, breaking the rules and being “too high to be cool” over the Dutch producer’s woozy beat, comes from the forthcoming soundtrack to the Brad Pitt-starring racing film F1.
“Who would have thought that Tiësto would have a collab with Sexyy Red?” the producer recently told Billboard backstage at EDC Las Vegas. “No one, absolutely no one, but here it is, and it’s an amazing track. I think people will really like it. It’s super dance.”
“OMG!” has been in the works for awhile, with Tiësto playing it during a huge performance in October at the annual dance gathering ADE. The track comes from the F1 the Album soundtrack, with the corresponding film hitting theaters on June 27, the same day the soundtrack will be released.
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This soundtrack brings together a collection of musical titans including music by Dom Dolla (who’s slick contribution “No Room For a Saint” came out last month), Doja Cat, ROSÉ, Peggy Gou, Chris Stapleton, Ed Sheeran, Raye, Burna Boy, Roddy Rich, Madison Beer, Tate McRae, Don Toliver and Myke Towers.
Tiësto, a known racing fan, also makes a cameo in the film, which stars Pitt as an aging F1 driver who returns to the sport after a long absence, along with Damson Idris, Kerry Condon and Javier Bardem. F1 The Movie was directed by Joseph Kosinski, who also directed the global blockbuster Top Gun: Maverick.
Listen to “OMG!” below:
Independent live events tech platform Fever said on Thursday it agreed to acquire the U.K. ticketing and discovery platform DICE, according to a press release.
The news comes a day after Fever announced it raised $100 million in a funding round led by L Catterton and Point72.
The tie-up will strengthen Fever’s standing as a global tech entertainment company and will help the 11-year-old DICE scale by giving it access to the 40 countries Fever operates in, the company’s executives said in a statement.
Fever, which operates a discovery platform and media reaching more than 300 million people in 40 countries, says joining forces with DICE will strengthen its global standing while helping DICE to scale. DICE says it has 10 million monthly active fans and ticket sales have doubled in the past two years, according to the press release.
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“We are strengthening our position as the leading global tech player for culture & live entertainment,” Fever’s co-founders Ignacio Bachiller, Alexandre Perez and Francisco Hein said in a statement. “We are firm believers that data and technology have the power to elevate the live music experience — making it more accessible, more personalized, and ultimately more impactful for fans, artists, and venues alike.”
Fever, which combines audience insights, ticketing and discovery tools for promoters and venues, was most-recently valued at $1.8 billion in 2023, Music Business Worldwide reported. The company partners with festivals, such as Primavera Sound, Rock in Rio Lisbon and Pitchfork, as well as independent venues like Clapham Grand.
DICE users will be able to continue using the platform “exactly as they are today,” according to the release.
LionTree Advisors LLC served as the financial advisor DICE, and Wilson, Sonsini, Goodrich & Rosati LLP served as their legal counsel. Fever Labs Inc. was advised by Davis Polk & Wardwell LLP and Morrisson & Foerster LLP.
Madonna is giving the people what they want. The singer announced on Thursday morning (June 5) that she will release the long-rumored Veronica Electronica collection, an album featuring rare and unreleased remixes of songs from her beloved 1998 Ray of Light album. The eight-track LP will be released digitally and on silver vinyl on July […]
Reservoir Media has entered into a strategic partnership with Fool’s Gold Records, adding the A-Trak co-founded independent label to its recorded music portfolio. As part of the deal, Reservoir acquires the master rights to key catalog recordings from artists including A-Trak, Danny Brown and Low Pros. In addition, Reservoir will take on exclusive marketing and distribution responsibilities for all past and future Fool’s Gold releases through its label platform.
As part of the deal, facilitated by Fool’s Gold CFO Jorge Mejias, label manager Nathaniel Heller and A-Trak’s management team at TMWRK, Fool’s Gold joins Reservoir’s roster of influential independent labels, which includes Chrysalis Records, Tommy Boy Music and New State. The partnership also extends to a new sub-label, A-Trak & Friends, which will be distributed by Reservoir. The first release from this imprint, “Reaching” by James Juke featuring LION BABE, debuted last month.
Terms of the deal were not disclosed.
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Founded in 2007 by A-Trak (Alain Macklovitch), Nick Catchdubs, David Macklovitch, and the late Joshua Prince, Fool’s Gold has built a reputation for blurring the lines across hip-hop, dance and electronic music. The label played a pivotal role in launching the careers of artists like Kid Cudi, whose debut single “Day ‘N’ Nite” was released through Fool’s Gold, as well as Run the Jewels, Flosstradamus and Danny Brown. A-Trak’s own projects, including his duo Duck Sauce’s hit “Barbra Streisand,” are also part of the catalog now under Reservoir’s distribution.
A-Trak has also made a name for himself as a solo artist with tracks like his remix of the Yeah Yeah Yeahs’ “Heads Will Roll” and singles such as “Ray Ban Vision” and “Believe.” The Fool’s Gold catalog further includes music from Treasure Fingers, Hoodboi, Tommy Trash and Michael Christmas.
Reservoir president and chief operating officer Rell Lafargue said, “As both founder and artist, A-Trak has built Fool’s Gold into a genre-blurring label that has been at the forefront of hip-hop, house, and everything in between for nearly two decades. We’re proud to welcome A-Trak, Fool’s Gold, and its artists into the Reservoir family as we continue to champion culturally significant independent music.” He continued, “This multifaceted deal also highlights Reservoir’s ongoing expansion in recorded music and our team’s ability to deliver across the full spectrum of the music business.”
A-Trak added, “I’ve been thoroughly impressed by Reservoir ever since the first time we all spoke. Everyone at the company has a deep passion for quality music. A big part of what’s helped Fool’s Gold navigate 18 years in the music biz is staying very nimble and malleable. Reservoir was able to craft a creative deal with us that showed real agility — that’s exactly what we were looking for in a new partner.”
When Lady Gaga asked Gesaffelstein to appear during her Coachella 2025 weekend one headlining show, the French producer’s answer was obvious: “oui.”
“Of course we had to say yes,” says Alexandra Pilz-Hayot, the founder and director of Savoir Faire, the French company that’s long managed the electronic producer. “He really wanted to be there with her for the launch of the tour.”
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His team worked with Gaga’s to figure out logistics like where the artist born Mike Lévy would stand onstage and what equipment he’d use. Beyond that, “we didn’t really ask that many questions,” says Pilz-Hayot.
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Gesffelstein and his team arrived at Coachella, surprised to see that only one name was on the list of guest artists for Gaga’s Mayhem Ball: Gesaffelstein.
“We literally asked [Gaga], ‘But are there other guests?’” says Pilz-Hayot.
“No, no, you’re the only one,” she told them.
“We were like, ‘Oh my god.’”
Hours later, Gesaffelstein was onstage alongside Gaga and her fleet of dancers, performing for the tens of thousands of people on the field and the millions more watching around the world via livestream.
“GESAFFELSTEIN, OH MY GOD IT’S GESAFFELSTEIN,” at least one person in the crowd screamed when the producer appeared onstage in his signature all-black everything — trousers, jacket, gloves, shimmering mask formed in the shape of his face and hair — at the start of the show’s third act. The slender producer towered behind musical equipment held up by shimmery black pillars, as he and Gaga performed their sexy, funky, playful pop romp “Killah,” a collaborative track from Gaga’s March album, Mayhem.
The moment was a figurative exclamation point on an unrelenting year. The last 12 months have contained Gesaffelstein collaborations with Gaga and Charli xcx (Brat‘s “B2b” and “I Might Say Something Stupid”), the release of his own third studio album, Gamma, and the launch of the tour behind this album, a run that began in April of 2024 on Coachella’s Outdoor Stage and has hit global festivals and standalone arenas like Los Angeles’ Kia Forum.
The tour has indulged the dark, minimalist, deliciously intense and undeniably tantalizing world the producer — long a revered figure of the electronic underground — has erected with both his tough as nails industrial-leaning electronic music and corresponding aesthetic, with this tour easily being one of the best electronic shows on the road in 2024 and 2025.
Julian Bajsel
Julian Bajsel
The tour’s production design was conceived by Lévy and Pierre Claude, who’s worked with the artist for the last 12 years, since the tour for his 2013 debut, Aleph. In his role as production and lighting designer, Claude is in charge of designing the show’s set and lighting schematic while coming up with the ideas it takes to make it all hit hard while also avoiding de facto electronic live show elements like fire, confetti and soaring LED screens.
“Mike is very involved with his own tour for sure, from the design and the story,” Claude says. “For this, he wanted something massive — a big set piece, very theatrical, no technology or automation or anything futuristic, just a theatrical set. And black, of course — everything is black with Mike.”
“You have one person on stage who’s doing everything with machines,” adds Pilz-Hayot. “So it’s trying to make it almost like a ceremony. That’s always been the brief all his life. Of course, we wanted something bigger, that had the spirit of something that would be monumental.”
(Adding to the mystery of it all, no one has interviewed Lévy since circa 2014, a streak that would not be unbroken for this story. Pilz-Hayot explains that “he’s always been very protective of himself; what he wants to share with the audience is never the ‘behind the scenes.’”)
Together, the team conjured a design that puts Gesaffelstein on a raised podium, bookended by his equipment and structures fabricated in the shape of long black crystals, a sort of phantasmagorical flourish in an otherwise tidily designed structure meant to evoke the theater. The setup includes between six to eight towering pillars (depending on the size of the stage) with Gesaffelstein and his podium placed atop a set of stairs. Altogether, it gives the feeling that he’s playing from within a sort of Blade Runner-style Pantheon — and not even necessarily performing from within the set, but being part of it.
“That’s why he’s wearing a mask,” says Claude. “It’s not like a DJ or performer on stage. Mike wanted to be part of the design.”
The set was built in Burbank, Calif., given the city’s proximity to Indio, where Coachella happens. This routine was the same as for Gesaffelstein’s lauded tour behind 2019’s Hyperion, which also began at the festival. “We started at Coachella every time on the Outdoor Stage,” Claude says, “which is very stressful for us, because we have no rehearsals before.”
Did everything at Coachella 2024 go according to plan, despite having no official run through? Claude considers it: “Yes, actually. Yes.”
It helps that this current show is easier to pull off than the one for Hyperion, given that it’s a static piece that involves less technology and moving parts.”We just wanted to work out the lighting with music, so we don’t need technology besides lights and music,” Claude continues. “The plan was to do something very simple, but intense.”
If you’ve stood in front of the stage on this tour, it’s hard to deny the show’s ferociousness, which ramps up over the course of the hour-plus show as Gesaffelstein manhandles his synthesizer. Throughout, he’s bathed in washes of mostly white light and surrounded by lasers as the music builds to a place of pure pummeling. His only interaction with the crowd is when he briefly turns to face forward, extends an arm and wags his middle and index fingers to make a sort of “come with me” gesture. Adding to the intrigue is that it’s impossible to read his face, given the aforementioned mask.
This costume piece, which Pilz-Hayot says was partially inspired by the themes of beauty and sin in Oscar Wilde’s The Picture of Doran Gray, became part of the Gesaffelstein canon on the Hyperion tour. This time, however, the eyes of the mask glow unsettlingly, an effect that adds the surreal feel and helps the show achieve its intended sci-fi mood — even if it does also obscure the artist’s objectively perfect face.
“When he told me he wanted to wear a mask for the Hyperion tour I was like, ‘What the f–k?’” recalls Claude. “He’s like, one of the most beautiful artists in the world, and he wants to hide his face? I was a bit disappointed, because he looks so cool onstage smoking cigarettes or for an hour [while he played]. But when he came for the first show with the mask on, it was like, “What the f–k — It looks so good!’”
“It’s not an artist anymore,” says Pilz-Hayot. “It’s a character.”
On both aesthetic and functional levels, the mask also adds to the intensity. While it’s thin in design and equipped with a fan, Claude reports that “it’s difficult for him to hear.” He uses an in-ear monitor “like an F1 driver,” but the situation is exacerbated by the fact that “he can’t see a lot. He can see like, the first row.”
But “for him, it doesn’t matter,” Claude continues. “His music is intense, so he doesn’t want to have a good time on stage. He just doing his job.”
Julian Bajsel
Julian Bajsel
In terms of lighting, the one moment of color comes during the slinky, G-funk inspired 2013 classic “Hellifornia” during which the stage is bathed in deep red light. “We really wanted to have a dirty strip club mood,” Claude says of this color choice.
Given the emphasis on simplicity, Claude worked to “hide all the technical stuff.” Lights, lasers, cables and even musical equipment are hidden behind columns and under the steps, which are in fact just props and unable to support any weight, making them easier to transport. With no technical elements visible, Claude says the show is almost the “total opposite” of the current lights and lasers bonanza that Gesaffelstein’s friends Justice are currently touring with.
The producer and his 10-person touring team have brought the show to dance-focused festivals around the world. U.S. stops included San Francisco’s Portola, San Diego’s CRSSD, Miami’s Ultra Music Festival and last month’s EDC Las Vegas. Given that some of these dance fests have stage that are fantastically shaped liked butterflies and flowers, Claude says it’s often “very difficult” for him to adapt the minimalist show to the whimsical surroundings. (To wit, it was a striking juxtaposition when Gesaffelstein played EDC’s lotus flower-shaped NeonGarden stage as a fireworks finale lit up the sky behind him.)
“There is not a place that really suits him,” says Pilz-Hayot. “He’s obviously very different from what happens in the EDM scene globally, musically or in live production.”
Still, the dance festival world has warmly welcomed him, and Pilz-Hayot says the team received many show offers after the 2024 Coachella debut. (This type of organic marketing is helpful, given that he doesn’t speak publicly or even have an Instagram account.) His sound also makes it possible for him to exist at major multi-genre festivals at Coachella, Paris’ We Love Green (where he plays this Saturday, June 7) and San Francisco’s Outside Lands, where he plays in August, while making him a fit for other genre-focused events, like Germany’s Rock am Ring and Rock im Park metal festivals — where Gesaffelstein played in 2014, taking the stage after Iron Maiden.
“We were the last act,” says Claude. “The metal fans walked towards the exit and Mike was playing there, and they all stopped and really enjoyed [the performance],” with Gesaffelstein’s heavy canon sharing obvious DNA with the hard, loud and head-banging metal realm.
This ability to exist across worlds while also doing something uniquely his own has arguably been the draw for pop stars like Gaga, Charli and The Weeknd, the latter of whom collaborated with Gesaffelstein on 2019’s “Lost In the Fire.”
“He’s so outside of trends and really wants to follow his path and his artistic proposal,” says Pilz-Hayot. “In a way, he’s been doing this same approach and very particular sound since day one, so the way he produces is so specific that people just want Gesaffelstein’s stamp on their music.”
But those bewitched by the darkness of his sound should not discount the pop sensibility that also lies within. “He has a very strong sense of melody and pop,” continues Pilz-Hayot. “You hear it on the Charli song and the Gaga song, especially on the track ‘Killah.’ It’s the meeting of two artists who really understand each other musically. It’s been the easiest collaboration.”
But you will not hear the track or any of his other pop collabs (which include an official remix of Gaga’s electro smash “Abracadabra”) in his current setlist, which instead pulls from his own catalog, and builds to a place that feels like blissfully getting punched in the face with a battering ram of drums. He’s got festival dates on the calendar through mid-August, then, Pilz-Hayot says, “I guess all he wants is to be back in the studio and making new music. You never know what happens next… but clearly a new album would be the next target.”
When this new album is ready to tour and further build out the dark kingdom of electronic music’s so-called dark prince, fans will be ready, and the team will be too.
“I’ll be touring with the with him forever,” says Claude. “He’s a good friend, and I f–king love his music.”
With his show at Sphere, Anyma created one of the dance world’s most talked-about live experiences in recent memory.
As the Italian-American producer tells it, this show and the sprawling visual world he’s long been focused on creating in tandem with his music is a response to what he was seeing elsewhere in the world of live dance and electronic shows.
“The reason why I went into the production of the visual experience was because I don’t really feel much from live events,” the artist born Matteo Milleri told Billboard in a recent feature story about his work and his just-released album, The End of Genesys.
“Of course, the underground dance stuff is great, because that’s its own thing,” he continues. “I’m talking about the big concerts, the big festivals, the big productions. For me, even with the technology and the budgets available, I just went home with my ears hurting. It’s difficult to even grasp an artist’s perspective when the production is overwhelming.”
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His idea was instead to create visuals that would allow him to “basically augment your purpose and your art with it. … That was the whole idea behind everything.”
The idea crystallized dramatically during the artist’s 12-date residency at Sphere, running from December through March. Fusing his own longstanding penchant for technology and boundary-pushing tech capabilities at the venue, which is built around a 160,000-square-foot LED screen that curves and reaches a height of 240 feet, Anyma and his team created a visually stunning production that incorporated themes of technology, nature, love, life and more.
The show’s head creative Alexander Wessely told Billboard that co-creating the show “was like re-learning a language while simultaneously writing poetry in it, trying to shape something new while staying in control of the chaos.”
But Anyma’s ambition to create something different did ultimately work. Not only was the show well-received by the hundreds of thousands of fans who saw it, its first eight alone grossed $21 million, according to numbers reported to Billboard Boxscore.
Damian Lazarus is bringing his longstanding Day Zero party to Brazil in 2026. The event will happen Jan. 3 in São Miguel dos Milagres, Brazil, located on the country’s northern coast in the state of Alagoas. Details regarding the lineup will be announced in the coming months. Bookings will presumably fuse the rich musical heritage […]