kaskade
During SXSW 2023, Billboard returned to Moody Amphitheater at Waterloo Park for 3 nights of concerts spanning 3 different genres. Billboard and Carnival Cruise Line teamed up for the final night to deliver a fun, unforgettable experience for music fans at THE STAGE. Carnival Cruise Line brought two fun activations to the party in Austin that elevated the consumer experience on-site.
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Trailblazing electronic producers Kaskade and deadmau5 joined forces to create a new DJ duo under the moniker Kx5. The timing of this headlining performance couldn’t have been better as Kx5’s debut album had only been released to the world 24 hours before the show.
Guests at Billboard Presents The Stage at SXSW held at the Moody Amphitheater at Waterloo Park on March 18, 2023 in Austin, Texas.
Izzy Nuzzo for Billboard
While waiting in line on Red River Street, festival goers were greeted by a giant Carnival Cruise Line-themed slide inspired by the water slides on Carnival cruise ships.
Guests at Billboard Presents The Stage at SXSW held at the Moody Amphitheater at Waterloo Park on March 18, 2023 in Austin, Texas.
Izzy Nuzzo for Billboard
Guests at Billboard Presents The Stage at SXSW held at the Moody Amphitheater at Waterloo Park on March 18, 2023 in Austin, Texas.
Izzy Nuzzo for Billboard
Prior to the electrifying set from Kx5, DJ Logan Garrett and DJ Soxxi kicked the party off with high-energy sets featuring some of the hottest electronic dance music songs. In between performances, fans made their way to Carnival’s Cherry on Top™ activation, which was inspired by the candy store of the same name on board all Carnival Cruise Line ships. Upon arrival, fans with general admission tickets could upgrade to VIP at the Cherry on Top™ activation.
Carnival at Billboard Presents The Stage at SXSW held at the Moody Amphitheater at Waterloo Park on March 18, 2023 in Austin, Texas.
Brandon Todd for Billboard
Carnival at Billboard Presents The Stage at SXSW held at the Moody Amphitheater at Waterloo Park on March 18, 2023 in Austin, Texas.
Izzy Nuzzo for Billboard
Kaskade and Deadmau5 delivered an hour of nonstop, back-to-back transitions that kept fans dancing through a chilly Austin night. Notable content creator Eric Sedeño joined the party on Saturday and interacted with fans on-site before sharing his perspective of the show on socials!
K5; Kaskade; Deadmau5 at Billboard Presents The Stage at SXSW held at the Moody Amphitheater at Waterloo Park on March 18, 2023 in Austin, Texas.
Brandon Todd for Billboard
The Carnival Cruise Line slide and Cherry on Top™ activations were key moments for attendees at THE STAGE. Fans took full advantage of the additional fun on-site and our ten lucky fans were elated to receive ticket upgrades to experience Kx5 up close & personal. Stay tuned for more from Billboard at SXSW and check out the content Eric created for a recap from the night.
Carnival’s newest ship, Carnival Celebration™, is now sailing out of Miami and her sister ship, Carnival Jubilee™ will be setting sail soon in 2023 out of Galveston. Plus, two new ships will be bringing a unique Fun Italian Style™ flair to the fleet, Carnival Venezia™ setting sail this Spring out of NYC and Carnival Firenze™ setting sail out of Long Beach in 2024. Head to carnival.com to explore destinations and book your next cruise.
Ricky and guest at Billboard Presents The Stage at SXSW held at the Moody Amphitheater at Waterloo Park on March 18, 2023 in Austin, Texas.
Izzy Nuzzo for Billboard
Not even a power outage caused by a generator fire or an impending rainstorm could slow down Kx5 from taking over the Los Angeles Memorial Coliseum on Saturday.
Kx5 – a collaboration between Kaskade and Deadmau5 — did their second stadium show of the year in Los Angeles, following Kaskade’s inaugural public concert in July 2021 at the new SoFi Stadium, when Kaskade invited the Mau5 to open the show and the Kx5 project was first teased.
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The Coliseum concert, which Kx5 representatives say drew 46,220 fans, marks the biggest ticketed global dance event of 2022 for a headline artist, according to Billboard Boxscore.
The scheduled two-hour show was marred by a power outage to the stage around the midpoint that forced a nearly half-hour delay. When the duo retook the stage, Deadmau5 told the crowd that “a generator caught fire” and the duo poked fun at the power company. “A little fire is not going to stop a good time,” Deadmau5 said. “I’m actually kind of surprised how quickly we got that back up, considering.”
(Deadmau5 later posted an all-black screen on his Instagram, quipping that “here’s some footage of the stage production when the generator caught fire,” drawing a “hahahahahahahaha” from Kaskade.)
A spokesperson for Deadmau5 and Kx5 tells Billboard that the main generator powering the stage production “caught fire due to overheating, and due to safety reasons they had to wait until flames were put out before the backup generators kicked in.” (The spokesperson adds that the Coliseum allowed the duo to play past their curfew to complete the show.)
The temporary loss of power only impacted the stage production and had no effect on the rest of the venue, Kevin Daly, the Coliseum’s assistant general manager, tells Billboard.
The stadium show capped a year in which Kx5 released several singles together, including “Escape,” “Alive” and “Take Me High.” They plan to release an album together in 2023, a spokesperson confirms to Billboard.
Joel Zimmerman, the Toronto-based producer known as Deadmau5, and Ryan Raddon, the Chicago-born and LA-based Kaskade, have a long history of producing together, dating back to the 2008 dance hit “I Remember” and 2014’s “Move for Me,” songs that helped define the EDM explosion in the U.S. They also performed as Kx5 at this year’s Electric Daisy Carnival in Las Vegas.
Saturday’s event featured a mix of Kaskade and Deadmau5 hits, including “Ghosts ‘n’ Stuff” and “The Veldt,” and their Kx5 collaborations. It ended with an encore of “Escape,” the Kx5 track that topped the Billboard Dance/Mix Show Airplay chart in April. British singer Hayla emerged onstage in a glittering silver dress to sing along as fireworks burst from the top of the stage for nearly a full minute. A steady drizzle finally kicked in just as fans were exiting the venue.
Aside from their new musical productions, the duo’s onstage performance on Saturday showcased high-level production, including frequent fireworks and other pyrotechnics and several aerial drone-writing moments, including one depicting the entrance to the Coliseum and another of the outline of the state of California.
The production also leaned into elements of Deadmau5’s previous live appearances featuring the Cube v3 – which he designed and helped write code for — that have earned the Canadian DJ-producer a reputation as a live-event technical innovator. For the Kx5 show the duo took the stage atop separate cubes that moved side-to-side on tracks, spun 360 degrees and could elevate about 10 feet in the air. The cubes occasionally joined up together where the DJs could interact with each other and appear on camera together for the audience.
Saturday’s show also marked the first time that Kaskade had performed in the Coliseum since 2010, when he headlined the last Electric Daisy Carnival to be held in Los Angeles. The two-day festival was scarred by the death of 15-year-old Sasha Rodriguez, who died of a suspected drug overdose after attending the event, leading Insomniac to move EDC to Las Vegas in 2011, after 13 years at the LA Coliseum.
“What was that, a gap of 12 years?” Deadmau5 asked Kaskade in Saturday’s waning minutes. “Holy shit.”
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