Vegas Magazine - Niche Media - There is a place beyond the crowds, beyond the ropes, where dreams are realized and success is celebrated. You are invited.
Issue link: http://digital.greengale.com/i/577402
Seeking out local pockets of interest, he worked in record stores and as an A&R rep for a label, all the while experimenting with and releasing his own music. Instead of relying on samples, he created elaborate soundscapes— dreamy, seductive beats accompanied by vocals from friends, cousins of friends, and basically anyone who was willing. "My career really mirrors what's been happening with electronic music in general," Kaskade says. "As it's gotten bigger, I rose with it." The frst major turning point was the Electric Daisy Carnival in Los Angeles in 2009, when about twice the expected number of festival attendees showed up. "I'm up there playing my music, something I wrote sitting in a basement three years ago, broke, eating Top Ramen, and 90,000 people are singing along with me on the chorus," he says. "Like, this has fnally matured so that it's more than just city kids. The bridge-and-tunnel kids found out about this. It was exhilarating." Around the same time, Wynn approached him about playing a couple of summer dates at its then newly opened clubs. But Kaskade had another idea: He wanted to import from Ibiza the idea of the DJ residency. (Until then, Vegas residencies were reserved for mainstream pop acts, like Cher or Rod Stewart.) So he and Sean Christie, a managing partner at Encore Beach Club, sat at the back of the resort's Society Café coming up with plans. "We were fully throwing it against the wall—like, Is this going to work?" Kaskade recalls. "And we were kind of rubbing our hands, like, Yeah, I think people are ready to hear electronic music in Vegas." On Memorial Day 2010, Kaskade made his way—not as stealthily as he did tonight—through a crowd of 5,000 people to a rinky-dink booth in the middle of the club, while thousands more lined up to get in. "That will forever go down in my mind as like, Okay, my life's different. Everything's changed from this moment on." What started as an off-the-cuff pitch soon turned into a full-blown industry. Today, most of the best-known names in the business have Vegas residencies—Skrillex, Diplo, Avicii, David Guetta. Reputable sources estimate that some of them command salaries of at least $250,000— per gig. Rival hotels constantly try to poach talent to keep up with the craze. "There's a competitive nature there because we're trying to differentiate "We were kind of rubbing our hands, like, Yeah, I think people are ready to hear electronic music in Vegas." ourselves," Kaskade explains. "But everyone's really pretty cool to one another for the most part." For a while, Wynn lost Kaskade to the nearby Cosmopolitan, which makes nights like this all the more special: This is his triumphant return. Not only that, but the hotel recently completed a $10 million renovation to create a more immersive experience. A decade ago, these performances didn't approach the pyrotechnic heights they now reach, with a giant LED screen behind the booth projecting colorful, mesmerizing images of celestial orbs and focks of birds, while fames shoot from the rafters with every drop—the part of the song where the DJ drops the bass back into the track and the crowd goes absolutely wild as the vibrations rattle their tonsils. It's one of Kaskade's favorite moments of his sets, which can last from two to four hours. "Ten years ago," he says, "you lit a sparkler at a club and people were ripping their faces off." Does this spectacle eliminate the need for additional recreational enhancements? "It works for me, and I'm drinking a Fiji water." V vegasmagazine.com 83