Tag: edm

Los Angeles on Mushrooms: Infected Mushroom at Exchange LA

Rob Shepyer December 30, 2018

I have a long history following Infected Mushroom as a fan. I used to see them all the time, from EDC back when it was in L.A., to New Years Eve at the Hollywood Palladium, to Christmas Eve at Avalon, to Vegoose music festival watching them against a glossy Las Vegas desert background. Most of these shows were a decade ago and at that moment in music, EDM was taking over America. Infected Mushroom, with their live band component and Israeli sensibility, offered a unique style of trance that was exciting, metallic, and electrifying to inspire more than just dancing. Infected Mushroom was like the musical realization of the greatest video game ever that has yet to be made, it’s like Castlevania meets Zelda meets Mario meets Final Fantasy… on mushrooms. related content: The Protomen: Mega Men On A Mission At The Echoplex Most Jews I know hold a special place in their heart for Infected Mushroom, the most successful Israeli group of all time. When you travel to Israel and come to know the people, you can see how Infected’s sound could’ve only come from that culture. It’s a sound that has an appreciation for all others cultures, whether

Photo Recap: Kruder and Dorfmeister at the Fonda

Janky Smooth Central Command November 10, 2018

Legendary Austrian down-tempo DJ duo Kruder and Dorfmeister came to play the Fonda Theatre on their brief American tour. Featuring some of the coolest mixing I’ve heard heard and most beautiful and deliciously disorienting visuals I’ve ever seen, this show was one for the books. The audience was also my favorite of 2018 featuring Europeans from every region and 90’s club kids that danced like they were still in their 20’s and on ecstacy. Photos by: Dillon Vaughn

Alison Wonderland Uplifts L.A. at the Shrine

Aria Silva-Espinosa August 20, 2018

Every EDM festival lineup, every mainstream festival EDM selection, year after year is an exhausting shirtless sausage fest. It’s totally true, look it up. Prior to 2014-ish, very few female acts graced the lineups of dance music-focused shows and festivals. Alison Wonderland was the woman who worked her way to the main stage of some of the largest festivals in the world and for the past three years she has toured the world bringing her unique blend of original vocals and electrifying dance music to her massive international fan base. Born Alexandra Sholler in New South Wales, she’s certainly come a long way from playing classical cello in the Sydney Youth Opera for those who want to argue that electronic artists aren’t real musicians. She played bass for a while too before being inspired to go in a different direction by Swedish avant garde electro-pop duo The Knife. The rest is kind of history. She began working as a mixer and began touring in her native Australia as Alison Wonderland in 2012 and released her debut single ‘Get Ready’ in 2013. related content: Overcoming Fear With Fever Ray At The Palladium Dance music festivals are big business for a lot

Take This: Win 2 Tickets to Kruder & Dorfmeister at The Fonda – Dance to K&D

Janky Smooth Central Command July 23, 2018

Peter Kruder & Richard Dorfmeister are considered the Godfather DJ’s of Vienna. Celebrating the 25th anniversary of their first EP, G-Stoned, the band is embarking on a tour on which they will perform for four hours straight just like in the old days. The downtempo genre owes everything to this duo and their unique mastery of tonal language. Their masterpieces The K+D Sessions and DJ Kicks have both sold over a million copies worldwide and are staples in any electronic dance music collection. Seeing this group perform is sure to be a memorable and inspiring experience for anyone with an open mind. That’s why Janky Smooth is incredibly proud to be giving away a pair of tickets to Kruder & Dorfmeister at the Fonda Theater on November 4th. Those lucky enough to win and attend the concert will experience a transformative four hours that will make you rethink the possibilities of music. YOU CAN BUY TICKETS HERE OR. ENTER TO WIN 2 TICKETS FOR KRUDER & DORFMEISTER NOVEMBER 4th AT THE FONDA Step 1- Join Our Newsletter (look for pop up everytime you arrive at jankysmooth.com) Step 2- Tag a friend and post a video of yourself dancing to any Kruder & Dorfmeister song in

Stayin’ Alive: Giorgio Moroder’s 78th Birthday At The Globe Theater

Robert Cohen May 8, 2018

Lately, I’ve been thinking a lot about who we become as we grow older. For all the hype the vitality of youth gets in our society, the shedding of the layers of bullshit that age affords people of all ranks is equally liberating and deserves its time in the sun as more than an ad for adult diapers or awful late-career DeNiro movie (I’m looking at you Dirty Grandpa). In many ways, this sentiment got its day at Giorgio’s Birthday Celebration at The Globe Thursday before last, with a fascinatingly disparate group of musicians who’re tied together by the knowledge that life is short, so you might as well be yourself. related content: Cloak & Dagger Fest: The Heart Of Los Angeles Bled From Dusk Till Dawn Kicking things off was the token millennial band of the night, Portland-based YACHT. As much as an admitted antipathy I’ve had for their music in the past, they managed to make a believer out of me when it finally clicked early on that the intermittently shitty indie-pop that I thought they were peddling is actually a rather clever satire on bands that are so focused on being “cool,” that they

When Words Fail To Describe A Band: Igorrr at the Echoplex

Rob Shepyer February 21, 2018

Intrigue is the best motivation to get your ass out and to a concert. Seeing a band you’ve been dying to see forever or being a super-fan and seeing your favorite band for the dozenth time are cool too, but never having listening to a band and only hearing a certain curious strain of hype around them, that’s the sweet-spot for a music blogger. Of all the bands I’ve ever seen, none have summoned up as many descriptors out of me as Igorrr and certainly “curiosity” is one of them. I first heard of the band from a podcast with Metal Blade Records owner Brian Slagel, the label notorious for introducing the world to a little band called Metallica. On that podcast, Slagel boasted that Igorrr was the newest band on his label that he was excited about and even he failed to describe the band with brevity. Hailing from France, a country that has only seen its biggest metal acts in the last two decades (Gojira and Alsace), what Igorrr does is combine almost every musical genre under the sun and pack it into an industrial-metal frame. As strange as that is to imagine (or maybe it isn’t these

Front 242 And Severed Heads Bring Classic Industrial To The Regent Theater

Rob Shepyer September 29, 2017

Cold Waves and Das Bunker joined forces to create one hell of a concert bill for a Wednesday night. Belgian innovators of EBM, Front 242 and Australian industrial icons, Severed Heads shared a stage for this incredible evening of dark, electronic music. Both groups are legends in the world of industrial but their performing styles couldn’t be any more different. related content: Psychic TV Experiment With Auditory Alchemy At The Echoplex The Regent was filled with goth kids, Skinny Puppy shirts abound. I eavesdropped on a few conversations and they were all talking about careers in game development. Das Bunker DJs were spinning some tracks as we waited for the opening act which I parked right in front of the stage for. The first thing I noticed about the stage set-up was the red roses strewn all over the electronic decks. I imagined with a name like Romy, they’d be an act with some kind of romance or romeo reference but came to learn she was no male heartthrob or heartbreaker. She was in fact an extraordinarily talented artist and might just be a female Trent Reznor in utero. Utilizing synths and drum machines, Romy makes incredibly catchy, hard-hitting and dark,

Perturbator, Author & Punisher: Using Devices To Debase Regent Theater

Rob Shepyer September 19, 2017

Electronic music allows a single artist to take on all the working parts of a band because those parts become synthesized in their machines. The electronic revolution has opened up new opportunities and avenues for artists who might not have ever been interested in picking up a guitar- and that’s no slight against EDM artists (up until this night I was under the impression that EDM was the Pop style of electronic music, at large). The point of music isn’t just to wow you and me with virtuosic and technical playing- it’s to express ones soul and if electronics help an artist do that more purely and directly then it’s a good thing. In this sense, Jim Morrison was right when he predicted the future of music would consist largely of one person and an arsenal of components. So if in Morrison’s mind’s eye he had an image of what that future would actually LOOK like, I doubt it would’ve differed too much from what I saw at The Regent Theater when Perturbator, Author & Punisher and Whiteqube were booked to showcase a different kind of electronic music than what you might imagine when you see the letters E D

A Hard Time at HARD Summer 2015

Justin Cornwall August 5, 2015

I have been a HARD Presents fan for a minute now. HARD Haunted Mansion 2011 at the Shrine was my first HARD event. HARD Summer 2012 was my first HARD Summer. Both events were top notch and helped forge my musical tastes as I grew into the LA being I’d one day become. Between then and now, I’ve been a part of about a dozen different HARD promoted shows and festivals. Over the weekend, on Sunday, I came upon the opportunity to head to the Pomona Fairplex to see what HARD Summer 2015 had to offer. As a fan of the brand, I had high hopes – as the lineup seemed eclectic enough in a plateauing ‘rave’ culture. We arrived later in the day, but there were still lines of barely dressed teens at the gate. It was an 18+ event but the security was barely holding the seams together with a very lax bag/ID check – there was definitely a <18 crowd at this event. We got through just fine and headed to meet some friends at the PINK Stage for some Jamie XX. There were 5 stages; 3 indoor and 2 outdoor. Pink, Yellow and 7Up (green) were

Galantis Submerges the Mayan Theater on a Monday Night

Justin Cornwall November 5, 2014

If you caught Galantis at any point this year, you’re one of the lucky ones. I say this because they’re going from small clubs to the main stage at festivals – and fast. This Swedish duo is refreshingly far from a House Mafia and there is no stopping their momentum right now.. The happy spin they put on heavy house music can do no wrong and has been featured in sets by everyone from Diplo to Pete Tong. Christian Karlsson (of Miike Snow) and Linus Eklöw (aka Style of Eye), who make up Galantis, punched some serious life into everyone attending at The Mayan last night. We arrived at The Mayan as Germany’s Booka Shade was wrapping their set. Steady house music with live elements, never a bad way to set the mood. After a short intermission to swap out the live setups, the anxious crowd was buzzing with energy. The #seafoxNATION (their fanbase) was alive and well – most of the crowd donned the paper Seafox (their brilliantly branded mascot) masks that Galantis had brought with them to gift to their fans. The headliners met the stage as an enthusiastic crowd welcomed them. The opening track was a clear acapella