THE PIONEER
KASKADE
Kaskade, the most prominent of
Marquee's headliners, has drawn
tremendous crowds to everything
from his Summer Lovin' residency
to an endurance-challenging
12-hour set on New Year's Eve.
"The most important preparation
is obvious: making certain that I
bring a colossal amount of music
with me," Kaskade says. "There's
no way of mapping out where a set
like that is going to go. I can build
the tension for what seems like
days and take people somewhere."
It helps that Kaskade doesn't
drink (he's been a vocal critic of the
media misrepresenting electronic
dance music) and that he's been as
responsible as anyone for the city's
DJ explosion. "I wouldn't say I so
much caught the beginning of the
boom as I orchestrated the boom,"
Kaskade says. "When Encore
Beach Club hired me to play a pool
party back in 2010, the idea was for
me to play some house music once
a month. That sounded fun, but I
had a different idea. I asked them
to let me curate the pool party
every weekend. I wanted to bring
talent in to play alongside me that
Vegas had never seen or heard. I
brought in Groove Armada,
Chuckie, Afrojack, Pete Tong, and
Dirty South, to name just a few."
The doors opened on Memorial
Day, and you could feel every-
thing starting to shift. "An
absolutely massive crowd had
shown up, and it was utter chaos,"
Kaskade says. "The reverbera-
tions of that pool party could be
felt from here to Ibiza." Now
Kaskade can show up and have
every show feel like a holiday
weekend. "When I began shaping
the idea to hold down a residency,
before that was something anyone
other than Cher could do, nobody
thought it could work," he says.
"Watching this concept that I was
a part of pioneering not only work
but monopolize the clubs is pretty
gratifying." marqueelasvegas.com
VEGASMAGAZINE.COM 97
