If you still need proof that Miami has grown an underground electronic dance music scene to rival international meccas like London and Berlin, look no further than the success of Underground Story. Five years ago, it was practically inconceivable for promoters to pull off an underground house and techno night…
To say that Dave Seaman knows a thing or two about programming a DJ set would be a considerable understatement. The pioneering British DJ-producer’s had over two decades to hone his craft at countless arenas around the globe. He’s also behind a hefty catalog of mix compilation albums, including several…
Don’t call Chaz Bundick’s sound chillwave. The California-based producer might have found his Toro y Moi project pigeonholed as such during its early Internet-based breakout phase, but anyone following his sonic evolution should know he has decidedly shed that dubious classification. “I feel that my sound has changed so much…
Theo Parrish is a producer’s producer. The Detroit techno veteran’s experimental flair puts him as much in the realm of avant-garde sound art as that of electronic dance music. After all, Parrish was creating sound sculptures and installations as a student at the Kansas City Art Institute before he was…
They’re among Miami’s most beloved DJs. You can catch them playing out most weekends at one hotspot or another, including for their Scaramouche party alongside world-class headliners. And they’re also among Miami’s most respected underground dance music tastemakers, thanks to their Nightdrive blog — a Miami New Times pick for…
As a ’90s Miami kid, Jesse Perez has bass in his DNA. In a way, his signature bump ‘n’ grind style of house music — designed, as Jesse says, for “grinding chongitas” — is descended directly from the booty bass that ruled Miami airwaves in the ’90s via 2 Live…
Miami pool parties. A dime a dozen, huh? Then so are all the DJ bros playing them. As in the greater male-dominated dance music scene, female talent is vastly unrepresented. But the folks behind Lost in Paradise aim to change that with a kickass new pool party series bringing the…
Dan Ghenacia, Dyed Soundorom, and Shonky are each celebrated DJ-producers in their own right. But as Apollonia, this Parisian trio is even greater than the sum of its individual members. It is a collective dance music powerhouse that, in many ways, encapsulates the global house music zeitgeist of 2014. Of…
Magical things happen when Berlin DJ-producers Hauke Freer and Matthias Reiling surrender to the disco gods and channel those cosmic funk-soul frequencies. “Session Victim refers to the way we jam in the studio,” Freer tells Crossfade, explaining the duo’s unique choice of moniker. “We don’t aim to write a particular…
From his electroclash heyday in the early 2000s to his more recent house and techno forays, Montreal DJ-producer and Turbo Recordings boss Tiga has always managed to stay ahead of the curve stylistically. One decade, he’s putting out sleazy electro reinterpretations of guilty pop pleasures, like Corey Hart’s “Sunglasses at…
It’s only been a couple of years since two Dutch boys with a mutual love for the old Motown sound dropped their first collaborative release as Detroit Swindle. But that’s all the time Maarten Smeets and Lars Dales have needed to grow into a veritable international deep house institution. And…
Sounds like the 305. Just stumble down the street, slip into the club at 3 a.m., or tune into some pirate radio station while crossing the causeway from South Beach to the mainland. And almost as if by accident, a Magic City soundtrack will arise from the cacophony — a…
Back in 2011, we here at Crossfade included Terre Thaemlitz, AKA DJ Sprinkles, on our list of the World’s Least Douchey DJs. It was a nod to her longstanding work as an educator and activist promoting awareness of lesbian, gay, bisexual, and transgender issues. Like many others, we’d first gotten…
Poland might not be a major exporter of EDM talent, but it did spawn two major international tastemakers. We’re talking about Catz ‘n Dogz, of course, AKA Wojciech “Voitek” Taranczuk and Grzegorz “Greg” Demianczuk, DJ-producers extraordinaire and the masterminds behind Pets Recordings. As a European counterpart of sorts to Claude…
Israel is by no means lagging behind the electronic dance music capitals of the world. In particular, the coastal city of Tel Aviv — known as the “city that never sleeps” — boasts a world-class nightlife and voracious appetite for electronic beats. It’s no surprise then that Israel would spawn…
Classifying any musicians’s sound as simply downtempo is unfair. The term says nothing about the idiosyncrasies and stylistic nuances of the individual artist’s work. In fact, it’s merely a description of the music’s rate of speed, a suggestion that these tracks are meant for afterhours home listening instead of the…
In the beginning, there was Jack, and Jack had a groove. And from this groove came the groove of all grooves. And while one day viciously throwing down on his box, Jack boldly declared, “Let there be house!” Thus preached the Reverend Chuck Roberts in 1987. And if the gospel…
What do you get when you cross a Miami house music legend like Murk’s Oscar G. with a next-generation Miami house wunderdude like Lazaro Casanova? You get the dance floor-quaking Miami powerhouse of Futro. The homies Oscar and Lazaro have been working together on and off for a few years…
Spanish producer Henry Saiz first came to international prominence at the tail-end of the 2000s via releases on John Digweed’s Bedrock Records, the global touchstone for progressive house. And Saiz would also go on to mix the 2011 installment of Balance, the prestigious mix series known for its prog house…
When Mount Kimbie, the London-based production duo of Kai Campos and Dominic Maker, dropped 2010’s critically-acclaimed debut album Crooks & Lovers, the media swiftly christened them poster children for the “post-dubstep” movement. But even then, it was a reductionist label for Kimbie’s sound. While held up by broken beats and…
Strahil Velchev — better known as KiNK on international dancefloors — took no shortcuts during his two-decade trajectory as a producer. Nor was he given any major breaks. It was pure passion and perspiration that got him where he is today. Raised in Bulgaria when the country was still culturally…
Like his fellow Londoner, T. Williams — who we spoke with this summer and will be sharing Bardot’s DJ booth with him as part of the III Points Festival on Saturday — Mosca (AKA Tom Reid) is a quintessential UK rave kid, weaned on that local scene’s exorbitant diversity of…
