MusicFests365 caught up with Kaskade at Crush, AZ! Watch below to hear his thoughts on the evolution of dance music and more. (PLEASE NOTE: The clicking sound stays for 30 seconds and then disappears – no, we’re not sure what it was but it goes away!)

 

MF365:

Hey this is Blake with MusicFests365, we’re here with Kaskade, the man himself coming on (stage) in about 20 minutes. We wanted to ask him a few questions; we noticed you had some thoughts previously about the evolution of EDM a few years ago, what are your thoughts about that now? Just from when you’ve started – you’re one of those DJ’s that have been in the scene for a while, which is awesome. So you have a new perspective to bring about what you’ve seen from when you first started playing to now, and how the scene has evolved.

Kaskade:

That’s a really big question. I’ll try to condense it as much as possible, cause that’s an hour long segment there, but that’s good! Listen, the underground continues to evolve and change and move really quickly. I think EDM kind of as a term, as a word right now… people don’t really like for whatever reason – that’s another discussion. Because I think EDM kind of became what the pop version of dance music is. I don’t know how that happened but yeah, so I feel like it’s kind of split into two things. There’s more of this pop like Calvin Harris, David Guetta kind of stuff going on, and then there’s this other stuff like Solomun and Luciano and Black Coffee. So there’s kind of this weird split that’s happened, and then there’s a couple dudes like me that kind of hang out in the middle.

MF365:

Is there a particular place you like to go to write your music? Somewhere out of the country, or remote, or maybe a vacation (spot) you have in mind?

Kaskade:

That’s awesome, I should do that more – I mean I travel all the time. Actually I prefer to be at home in my own studio when I’m writing. But inspiration could come at any time I mean something could happen tonight that’s amazing and on the way home I’m writing a song about it. I think for me I just carry a notebook around and whenever ideas come into my head like lyrical stuff I keep a catalogue of that and just write stuff down. And you know I’ve always got a laptop and I’m sketching out different production ideas. Inspiration can come at any time. Me, traditionally in the past, what I’ve done is I switch studios every single album. I’ve had ten studios over the last twelve, thirteen, or fourteen years – something like that. Not that that’s going to continue to happen because I just built this wonderful amazing studio in Santa Monica that I recorded the Christmas album at.

MF365:

Which we all love. My friends wanted me to tell you thank you for that, by the way, my friends from Denver.

Kaskade:

Wonderful, I like to hear that. Thank you very much friends from Denver.

Yeah so I don’t know I think when you move to new locations and different places they inspire different things.

MF365:

Last question for you: I’ve seen you at numerous festivals here in the states, do you prefer playing overseas rather than the states? Or is that just kind of a hit or miss depending on the festival?

Kaskade:

I think that’s one of these things with where the evolution of dance music is at, everyone’s kind of at a different spot in the world. Right now Europe is more underground leaning – it’s very underground, which a few years ago it was very pop. For a very long time they were kind of dominating the pop sound. Now here in America we’re kind of more pop when we were underground for a very long time. I think I prefer the North American scene because I live here, so it all makes much more sense to me. I understand the evolution and how things rolled out because I was a part of that. So I enjoy and I connect to the fans really easily. Not that I don’t love Europe or Asia, I do. The Asian scene is amazing, I love you guys. I mean everywhere is so different right now. The scene got so big globally so we’re all just in different spots now. But all of it’s fun. Here in Arizona it’s gonna be fun, right?

MF365:

100%. We appreciate the time. MusicFests365, thank you so much Ryan for your time. Kaskade, killing it tonight, Crush, AZ.

 

 

 

Huge thanks to Crush, AZ – we couldn’t have asked for a better experience at their event!