Ever since 2016, when JVNA burst onto the EDM scene with a stirring and emotional cover of “Dearly Beloved” from PS2 classic Kingdom Hearts, the LA producer has been blurring the lines between dance music, video game culture and pure emotional outpouring. You don’t have to be a gamer to get caught up in these swelling pianos and sudden bass drops, but with covers of tracks from Maple Story and NieR:Automata (and Kingdom Hearts), it probably doesn’t hurt. The young producer and singer recently completed her highly anticipated first album, but first stops in Sunnyvale for a night of pure dance release.

JVNA
Fri, 10pm, $30
Pure Nightclub, Sunnyvale

Born in a small seaport town in Connecticut, 28-year-old electronic music producer and DJ Audien has been making music since 2008. He got his first big break 2012 when he was featured on Armin van Buuren’s A State of Trance compilation and Above & Beyond’s 2012 EDC set. He topped the Billboard dance charts in 2015 with the hit single “Insomnia,” and has been selling out major venues and headlining EDM festivals since. He brings his unique, progressive trance sound to Pure Nightclub as he tours behind his debut full-length studio album, Escapism.

Audien
Fri, 10pm, $35+
Pure Nightclub, Sunnyvale

The Give Thanks festival lays claim to being the largest Thanksgiving weekend electronic dance music event in Northern California. The three-day festival begins Wednesday with the Parisian DJ duo of Tchami and Malaa. Their latest single, “The Sermon” comes from their upcoming collab EP, No Redemption. Malaa’s old-school style blends with Tchami’s new-school tone synergistically, putting a distinctly modern twist on breakbeat-driven ’90s house. The Las Vegas-based American producer 3LAU headlines the Friday-night show with his maximalist laser-beam beats, while the Mad Decent-signed L.A. duo Slander close out Saturday with their signature “heaven trap” sound.

Give Thanks
Wed, 9pm, $30+
City National Civic, San Jose

It’s that time of year again. As summer slips into autumn, the farmers prepare for the harvest, and the people prepare for the long hard winter ahead… It’s also time for Beyond Wonderland. A traveling electronic music circus—a playground for late teens and early 20-somethings to figure out just how little they can wear or just how borderline offensive a slogan they can slap across the front of a tank top. They come to get blitzed and feverishly dance—or flail, really—to throbbing electronic bass, twinkling melodies and grinding fax-machine-death-knells shaped into one of the tones commonly recognized as one of the 12 notes in the traditional Western musical scale.

Beyond Wonderland is a spectacle to be sure. Just check out these photos. Multiple impressively decorated stages—one featuring a giant, animatronic caterpillar, smoking a hookah and blinking his droopy mechanical eyelids over bright, LED eyeballs, surveying the proverbial valley of ashes that was the Shoreline Amphitheatre’s parking lot. There were lights and lasers galore, spiraling out into the night in seizure-inducing fits. The crowd was equally flashy. From candyravers to frat dudes, house dancers to oldtimers, the only barrier to entry was an $200. But that’s the festival scene, and with two days of DJs there’s room enough for the current glut of excessive and maximalist drivel and the good shit too. So, I paid the ticket and took the ride.

I also took notes… or tried to.

Beyond Wonderland was two very, very full days, and brave is the person who forged through the entire 19 hours. I sure wasn’t that brave, but I still took in more than my fill of music, all while occasionally scrawling something in my notebook (in increasingly illegible handwriting). Here’s what I culled from my notes:

Day 1

-If you’re going to hide in the bushes on Shoreline Boulevard to do drugs, don’t wear furry neon boots. We can see you.

– Parking and driving at Shoreline is a nightmare. Parking a few blocks away around the office parks is well worth the walk. Try to commandeer an abandoned Google bike for bonus points.

-Someone’s already getting transported by the EMTs. Hoo boy.

-Besides, the promised “TSA-style patdown” turns out to be a half-hearted rubbing by people at the gate.

-Initial impressions of Beyond Wonderland fashion aesthetic for ladies: what’s the minimal amount of clothing I can wear?

-Initial impressions of Beyond Wonderland fashion aesthetic for dudes: what’s the stupidest shit I can put on this tank top?

-Tank top examples:
“I’ll give you a hug if you give me phone number”
“Money / Weed / Pussy”
“Sit on my face #SoIKnowItsReal”
“I <3 (insert name of favorite drug)”

-Imagined meeting of two dudes with “I <3 Weed” shirts:
“Hey! Dude! Do you like weed as well?!”
“I do! I do also like weed!”
(They high five. So dope.)

-The main stage was impressive during the day, with it’s giant hookah smoking caterpillar. It only got more impressive at night. Lasers improve most things.

-First DJ of the day was Sound Remedy, which was alright until he dropped a remix of that fucking “Why you gotta be so rude?” song. I have a multifaceted hatred (like, a gem of hatred) for that song, for many, many reasons that are beside the point here. Fuck that song, my normally balanced and sharp reviewer’s consideration is irrevocably biased. I’m not qualifed to comment.

-Paul Oakenfold segued from Borgeous with some big room and then played some great trance, except that most of the crowd forgot how to dance without a drop.

-Over at PartyFavor though the crowd was going nuts. Trend at the festival for sure: the more trap in the set, the better. Some completely successful Bay Area pandering with Thizzle Dance. A+

-Overheard in the bathroom line: “You are already so drunk! I just wanted to have a good time!” “Great, I’m peaking and standing in the bathroom line.” “Dude, are you going to throw up again?” Struggle city.

-From my female friend: “I’ve had to stop making eye contact with guys, because then they immediately come toward me.”

-Later from the same friend: “I’ve only gotten my ass grabbed one time today!” It is sad she is excited about this. It is really not that hard to not sexually harass women. So, good job brostep dudes?

-Classic Keystone Cops moment as three security guards skid into a meeting in the middle of the crowd, gesture importantly at someone’s ID, then run off willy nilly.

-Destructo abandoned for direly necessary food truck run.

-Did we see Carnage? Paper diamond was cool I think. At this point, Total Sensory Overload begins to set in. There is no place without overwhelming bass. Later, everyone will agree that the sun was setting for at least 4 hours.

-Stray thought: “I’ve probably stepped in vomit at least 5 times today and not noticed it.”

-That moment when you realize you’ve been blindly following complete strangers.

-White-haired, pot-bellied old man spotted wearing John Lennon sunglasses complete with marijuana leaf lenses and a shirt stating “Molly Is My Best Friend.” He should definitely be consulted for new Kevin James vehicle “Undecover Dad 2: Undercover Dad Goes to a Rave.”

-12th Planet was killing it, throwing in some hard-style, trap, dubstep, but the other guy with him on stage would not shut up. Most DJs should not hold microphones, as they then seem to have an irresistible desire to spout a steady stream of inane shit. “OH NOW I PUT MY HANDS THANK YOU.”

-Oh god now he’s screaming into the mic…just kidding it’s a Skrillex remix.

-GTA plays the same big room everyone else is playing. At some point I probably could have walked across the entire festival and never stopped listening to “Booyah.” I never want to hear that song again.

-Krewella just played “Booyah.” Kill me. It’s cool that they sing live though. Great energy.

-Above & Beyond brought some welcome trance relief. People know how to dance now. They never said a word into the mic while I was there. Fantastic.

-Pendulum closed out day 1 with a great set playing to a smaller crowd on a side stage. I can’t feel my feet, but I can feel my brain. This is not how it should be.

Day 2: (Exhaustion and fear tempered by a large breakfast and eight cups of coffee)

-Major genre dispute at the Alvaro set: Is “jungle house” just big room house with a double time drop? Many strong opinions are offered, few of them can be heard.

-By day two the skill of group consensus via hand signals only has been mastered. This is key.

-Overheard: “Am I just high or is Alvaro crushing it right now?” “He’s crushing it.” At this time yesterday everyone was standing around looking at each other during Paul Oakenfold’s set. Now the crowd is nuts.

-Props to Alvaro for not playing “Booyah.”

-Notes get illegible here.

-People in the front of the bathroom line usually know better as to which Porta Potties are actually occupied. Usually.

-We chill out at with Moonboots’s deep house set for a while and find the congregation of the most naked people at the festival.

-I do a Serious Journalistic Survey on the way to and from the bathroom as to why today is so much better than yesterday, in five words or less.
“It’s the drugs.”
“It’s the environment. Everyone is more comfortable.”
“More people.”
“The crowd is hyped?”
“Five words?”
“Yesterday was better.”
“More trance DJs today.”

-The question was leading and shitty, but for real, Sunday was way better. Everyone danced harder, the sets weren’t repetitive, overall vibes were positive.

-The cops arrest one guy by the back fence and hold up his baggy of coke. What’s it like to be the one guy arrested for drugs at a festival where most people have drugs? (Ed. note: Actually, more than 60 people were arrested at the festival, according to The Merc. This was just the one arrest our intrepid reporter witnessed.)

-Kaskade closes out the festival in style with all sorts of fireworks and a high energy set. No one can resist “Atmosphere.”

In the end, we’re a bunch of people who can afford a $200 ticket and $11 Coors Lights having some good, commercially sanctioned fun. Which, for many, is where dance music is at right now. I don’t think I’m qualified (or coherent enough, right now) to comment on the whole scene beyond that, but in the future, I don’t think I need to pay that much for a dude to tell me to “Put your fucking hands in the air!” I mean, there’s an Animal Collective DJ set coming up at 1015 Folsom and tickets are $17.50. Booyah!

To check out our photo gallery of Beyond Wonderland, click here.

DJ Snake, who along with Lil John, created one of the most unabashedly, antagonistic party anthems in recent memory, will be headlining the Beyond Wonderland electronic music festival this Saturday. That song, “Turn Down for What,” exhorts listeners to keep the volume pumped, both literally and figuratively—as “turned up,” or “turnt,” in the parlance of our times, has become slang for getting wasted, reckless and otherwise partying hard.

But if last year’s Beyond Wonderland event was any indication, there will be plenty of Mountain View residents who will wish the festival would turn down. According to a report by the Mercury News, locals made around 130 complaints about noise in 2013—many of them related to the deep bass produced by electronic acts like DJ Snake and Kaskade who will be performing this year.

As for figuratively turning down, it would seem that was also an issue last year. More than 100 people were arrested at the 2013 Beyond Wonderland—many of them for drug-related offenses. According to Saul Jaeger of the Mountain View Police Department, officers will be on high alert this weekend (though he insists that is standard practice for any event this size and has nothing to do with the type of music being played).

Yet, as parents wring their hands over the perceived threat of EDM and as homeowners shake their fists at their rattling windows, the genre is only growing in popularity.

EDM, it seems, isn’t going away. And that’s understandable. After all, it wasn’t that long ago that establishment critics and parents everywhere were scowling and disapproving of hip-hop. Before that there was punk. And before the older Baby Boomers were finding the sounds of The Sex Pistols too caustic, their parents were telling them that real music was made by composers and performed by symphonies or big bands.

Mark Applebaum, an associate professor of composition and theory in the department of music at Stanford, teaches a course titled “Rock, Sex and Rebellion.”

Applebaum says that it’s not uncommon for hysteria to erupt around certain genres of music and the styles, philosophies and other cultural tenets that attach themselves to a given scene—especially when that scene is the new, younger kid on the block. In fact, such hysteria is cyclical and to be expected.

“I have a sense that every generation hopes they die before they get old,” Applebaum says. “And then they get old, and then they are somehow disenfranchised and they don’t recognize cultural currents that are so important to younger generations. For that group it’s deeply alienating and troubling to see a younger group who care about things that are different than those things that they cared about. It is simultaneously a puissant reminder of their own mortality. That can’t be fun.”

Beyond Wonderland is this weekend at Shoreline Amphitheatre in Mountain View. More info.

You could fill a rolodex with adjectives to use when describing Wave Racer’s music—a high-energy mix of bright, shimmery synths and samples that wouldn’t sound out of place in the Nintendo 64 game from which Tom Purcell borrowed his stage name. One fan took to Twitter to proclaim that “listening to Wave Racer, is like looking at Lisa Frank stickers,” which also makes sense. It’s easy to imagine the Australian DJ and producer’s music evoking searing magentas, purples and neon pinks in the minds eye of a synesthete.

Purcell, who brings Wave Racer to SP2 Communal Bar + Restaurant next Tuesday, defers to his fans when it comes to explaining his tunes. “Everyone comes up with better adjectives than I do when describing my music,” he says. Wave Racer’s maximalist, “future bass” sound is often compared to Cashmere Cat, Hudson Mohawke and Rustie—all of whom are known for their jam-packed, erratic, yet pop-oriented, styles.

But all of that is too clinical sounding for Purcell. The way he explains it, he is just trying to make music that is “fun and makes you feel good with cool synth sounds.”

The majority of those “cool synth sounds” come from and through Purcell’s primary tool of creation—his laptop. “Technology and the Internet has made it possible for the process of making music a lot faster as well as having the ability to get more sounds on demand,” he says. The producer crafts his pieces by seeking out and experimenting with sounds—drawing them out of the vast electronic sea that is the web, pulling them apart, and combining them with other sonic scraps.

It’s a sound that is clearly resonating with clubgoers all over the world. Purcell is just coming off of a European tour, which took him to Amsterdam, London, Paris and Berlin. He’s set to play a homecoming show in Sydney before coming to the States for a string of shows, including the Mad Decent Block Party in Maryland, a headlining set at 1015 Folsom, and the SP2 show—a treat for fans of the bar who also happen to appreciate Wave Racer’s brand of glossy EDM.

The Wave Racer show is not the first such event at SP2, and it won’t be the last. However, according to Pomaikai Shishido, co-owner and manager of the bar and restaurant, SP2 is not looking to become a club. Although a previous show at SP2 drew as many as 800 people, the Wave Racer event is being intentionally limited in order to foster a more intimate vibe and avoid over-crowding.

As for Purcell, he is riding high on his recent, well, wave of success, and says he is excited for the show. “It’s always exciting going to new places and not knowing what to expect,” he says—“Just going out there to play my music and experiencing something new is really great.”

Wave Racer spins at SP2 Communal Bar + Restaurant on August 5 at 10pm. More info.

WHEN PROMOTER Chris Alba sought to kickstart a career as a DJ six years ago, rather than head out to the clubs, he stayed home. Alba staged his own parties in the downtown Los Angeles warehouse that he shared with five other artists. He called himself Whiiite. And in that DIY music scene, he met Sonny Moore, an EDM producer living in another warehouse nearby. The two DJs instantly clicked.

Moore was working on his second EP, one that would—unbeknownst to him and Alba at the time—go double platinum, earn a Grammy and a few years later help to eventually land him on the cover of Rolling Stone. Most people know Moore by his stage name, Skrillex.

“He showed me some production techniques, and explained some music philosophies that I still use with every production,” Alba says. “He taught how to make my own drums and synth sounds, and not just use a loop out of a sample pack.”

Alba, who is half Filipino and half Norwegian, grew up all over the United States, from LA to Louisiana. His wide-ranging sound reflects his diverse upbringing, with a repertoire that runs from electro house to sample-heavy trap.

The full range of his talents will be on display at Pure Lounge in Sunnyvale on June 6.

So why “Whiiite?” His branding acumen led him to choose the highly conspicuous name (it’s simply pronounced “White”) for SEO purposes, so people could easily find him online.

“I wanted to have a super-recognizable name like MSTRKRFT,” Alba says. “When I first got into Justice, I couldn’t find anything on them. I would google ‘Justice France’ and end up on some government website.”

After moving numerous times in his childhood, Alba graduated from high school in Pennsylvania, then ended up back on the West Coast for college at Cal State University, Fullerton.

There he studied film, with an emphasis in anime and graphic novels. To make some money on the side he promoted parties and DJed. When he realized he could survive off music alone he dropped out of school, just a handful of credits shy of graduation.

That was 2005. By 2008, Alba was living in downtown Los Angeles, rising through the ranks as a local DJ and promoter. He and his best friend, manager and business partner, Ryan Jaso, threw a Sunday night party at a club called Play, where local EDM acts, including Dim Mak label head Steve Aoki, would play to tiny crowds for little money.

“We’d be happy if 40 people showed up,” Alba says. “I think Aoki’s booking fee was only like $500 back then.”

Before hiring Aoki to play at his parties, Alba frequented Aoki’s scene in Hollywood, which drew big names to play intimate shows. Aoki’s parties, however, quickly became mainstream. Alba and Jaso stepped in to revive the original scene, in which up-and-coming producers played for audiences more attracted to music than glamour.

Alba has the look of both Skrillex and Aoki. All three are skinny and have long, straight, silky black hair and a bevy of tattoos (Alba’s most prominent one, on his forearm, is the face of Harry Houdini).

“We come from rock,” Alba says of himself, Aoki and Skrillex. “Our first CDs were Guns N’ Roses and Mötley Crüe, and that informs our music and style. You could see the division back then, between hip-hop and techno and rock, and we were rock flavored.”

While growing as a promoter, Alba bought Ableton software and began tinkering with remixes and original songs. Sometimes he remixed songs by the acts in the shows he was promoting, like Rusko, whom Alba discovered early in the dubstep producer’s career.

By October 2012, Alba had enough original music to release his first EP, Whiiite Begins, a broad mix of electro, drumstep and dubstep. Incorporating his passion for film and graphic storytelling, a 10-minute anime film, titled The Birth of Whiiite, written and directed by Alba and scored with songs from the album, accompanied the EP’s release. It tells the story of mild-mannered Chris, who is abducted by mysterious forces and given super-human musical powers.

Alba uses his music as inspiration for his anime filmmaking, and vice versa.

“Sometimes, when I’m making music it’s almost like I’m scoring a movie,” Alba says. “‘Houdini,’ [the title track on Whiiite Begins] sounds like a chase scene, because that’s where it fit into the film.”

Alba plans to release a new anime short film with each of his first five EPs, the second of which (so far unnamed) will be released late this summer. Unlike the Skrillex-like, high-spirited, playful sound of Whiiite Begins, his next project will be more trap-based—hip-hop samples infused with the headbanging rock vibes of his childhood.

“I want to inject dance into hip-hop” Alba says, “Whatever I make, the energy of Guns N’ Roses and Mötley has to come through. I like it when it’s rowdy. I like when it feels right on the edge, like there’s about to be a riot.”

Whiiite
June 6, 10pm
Pure Lounge, Sunnyvale
Guest list free before 10:30pm; $10 between 10:30 and 11pm
Register at purelounge408.com

Dutch DJ Armin van Buuren may not be a household name stateside just yet, but he’s a behemoth in the world of dance music. DJ Mag crowned him best DJ in the world—an award bearing worldwide clout—an unprecedented five times, he remains a leading force and tastemaker in trance music.

Van Buuren is a watershed figure in his native Netherlands, where his 2008 release, Imagine, was the first dance album to top the Dutch music charts. He’s earned the Order of Orange-Nassau (similar to being knighted in Great Britain) for his contributions to Dutch dance music and even headlined King Willem-Alexander’s coronation ceremony last year with the Royal Concertgebouw Orchestra. His podcast, “A State of Trance,” was the first of its kind, and now routinely attracts 20 million listeners across 50 countries every week.

Yet even while EDM’s domestic explosion has given him the chance to fill arenas in America, as he will likely do when he brings his new tour Armin Only: Intense to the SAP Center May 1, he’s still chosen to do things the hard way.

His latest concert—he playfully refers to it as “Christmas Dinner with Armin van Buuren”—gives him a chance to fully curate a large-scale dance music party. Utilizing a touring support system of 35 people and a list of performers that includes six singers, dancers, trampoline artists, acrobats and a live band, van Buuren is supplementing his set with a robust live element previously unseen in the dance world. It’ll also be a marathon for the ringmaster—he’s orchestrating things from the DJ booth for a full six hours.

Thanks to custom software, his technical crew will be able to see what he has cued to play next, allowing them to set time codes for lights and pyrotechnics or wrangle singers in time for them to appear on stage right on cue. While there’s sure to be plenty of rustling backstage, van Buuren aims for his show to come off like a seamless production.

“I think that the future of dance music is more of a theatrical experience,” explains van Buuren when reached by phone. “The days where you just show up, bring your USB key and play the Beatport top ten, those days will be gone pretty soon because people expect a little bit more.”

He’s quick to counter and say he’s not dissing other DJs who take that approach, and admits he’s done it himself. To use his analogy, “There’s nothing wrong with getting a burger at McDonald’s. It’s a quick fix. You can play all your big tracks, but it’s not so much creatively challenging.” Armin Only was conceived as a gourmet offering.

As he acknowledged in an interview with DJ Times, being christened one of the biggest DJs in the world certainly affords the opportunity to tour the world with just his USB key. Instead, he’s forging ahead with a tour that serves to provide the spectacle now expected of a stadium dance show while still retaining some creative freedom.

“I think it’s much more inspiring to really invest in your fans, in your show, and bring it further,” van Buuren comments when revisiting the idea of touring with a thumb drive. It’s a luxury he could certainly enjoy, but he admits he’s content to follow a more creatively fulfilling path.

“It’s exciting. It feels like I’ve totally started re-inventing myself again,” admits van Buuren.

Van Buuren also clarifies that althought the night will contain plenty of live elements he’s translated to his show from the world of theater, it’s firmly rooted in EDM.

“What you’ve got is still a dance music show, but I took the experience from the world of theater because I think the dance music world can learn a lot from [it],” van Buuren says.

While some would dread a six-hour DJ set, van Buuren enjoys the idea. As he noted, it gives him a chance to build a full night that will allow him to take some chances while sprinkling in plenty of hits, which isn’t possible with one-hour festival sets.

He’s also used to it, as six hour sets were the norm for him when he was coming up as a DJ. He once even played a marathon 12-and-a-half hour set in the Netherlands back in 2002.

Given the plan to make his DJ set as open as possible, van Buuren’s latest tour, while certainly ambitious, has helped him retain the creative spark that’s kept him going all these years. With plenty of ingredients to choose from on the fly, it’ll be interesting seeing how his sonic equivalent of hosting Christmas dinner plays out.

Armin Van Buuren brings Armin Only: Intense to SAP Center May 1. More info.

Steve Aoki doesn’t crowd surf. At his shows, he floats atop the candy-coated masses in an inflatable raft like a drunken yacht captain high on champagne and wobbly bass. He also launches birthday cakes. At a show in Toronto, Aoki hit a kid in a wheelchair with a cake, point blank. The fan was elated.

Aoki’s stage antics and work ethic—easily masked by an unmistakable fu manchu and party-all-the-time persona—have lifted him to global fame as one of the most recognizable names of EDM.

Aoki, who performs at the Event Center at San Jose State on Jan. 30, has always been an idea man who has pushed the limits and marketability of dance music on and off stage. He grew up in Los Angeles, where he started his career as a promoter and tastemaker.

“Hollywood in 2003 and 2004 was very much hip-hop, very much commercialized,” Aoki says. “There was, I hate to say it, no hipster culture.”

Aoki and his best friend, famous party photographer Mark Hunter, a.k.a. the Cobrasnake, threw parties that catered to a different crowd.

“We were for hipster kids in Hollywood, people who were educated on fashion and current trends and music,” he says. “Instead of having DJs play, we’d have bands come in and DJ. We had the Yeah Yeah Yeahs DJ a party, and bands like the Killers and the Shins.”

These parties led to the creation of Aoki’s label, Dim Mak Records, and they also forced him to become a DJ himself. When famous bands weren’t playing a party, DJ duties were left to Aoki.

“In college, I was definitely not a DJ,” he says. “I was in bands, I was playing guitar and bass. I was straight edge. It was a whole different world. DJ-ing for me didn’t start until that Hollywood party scene.”

In the beginning, Aoki’s bread and butter was remixes, which would take him anywhere from a few hours to up to five days to create. The crossover success of his addictive house remix of Kid Cudi’s “Pursuit of Happiness” in 2011 arrived at just the right time. Dance music was going mainstream, and the hit song, along with the growing profile of Dim Mak, elevated Aoki from trendy clubs to larger venues. His most recent Bay Area performances include a headlining set last summer at Shoreline’s Identity Festival and a return performance at the 7,000-capacity Civic Auditorium in San Francisco in November.

However, despite the success with remixes, Aoki is more focused on making original music. His most recent release was a collaboration with Linkin Park called “A Light That Never Comes.”

“It was a six-month process from start to finish on that track, which was new for me,” Aoki says. “We started from scratch. There was a period when doing remixes was definitely my favorite thing, but when you can write an original record that can stand the test of time, that’s far more satisfying than doing a remix.”

But finding time to create original tracks can be tough for Aoki, who plays an incredible 250-300 gigs a year. In the weeks since his Aokify Tour with Waka Flocka Flame ended in December, he has visited Japan and South America to headline EDM shows.

“If you’re [touring] as much as I am, you’ll find the time if you really put your head down and get to work,” Aoki says. “At one point you had to have access to a studio, which most people couldn’t do because it was too expensive. Now all you need is software on a computer. It’s changed the game in terms of efficiency and convenience.”

Still, he can’t create all of his original material on the road. Last year, he borrowed Bon Iver’s strategy and rented out a cabin in Mammoth to write most of his new original album, Neon Future, in isolation. The idea of an electro-house musician composing global dance hits in a Walden-like rustic cabin is, not surprisingly, something that an avant garde tastemaker like Aoki was eager to embrace.

Sometimes, however, it’s hard to tell whether he’s leading the pack or following it. The Linkin Park track is pleasing power pop—not music of which sharper-eared, more critical listeners would approve. Even going back to 2008, Pitchfork panned Aoki’s first mixtape, Pillowface and His Airplane Chronicles, with a 2.5/10 rating, and never reviewed him again.

But what critics condemn, the masses embrace. The YouTube video for “A Light That Never Comes” has more than 7 million views, and the comments demonstrate that many listeners can’t get enough. Aoki is an enigma—in some ways he represents the cutting edge of culture, but in others he’s a pop star for the global masses.

Fortunately, Aoki doesn’t care either way. He’s interested in the work, making his own music and bringing forth innovative new artists. He’s best as a label boss, the Diddy of EDM. In July, for example, he announced that Dim Mak would be throwing its full support behind hardstyle, a more aggressive genre on the dance music spectrum than what’s typically found on the DIm Mak roster. He signed Belgian hardstyle artist Coone, and Aoki’s collaboration with Coone, called “Can’t Stop the Swag,” will be released Jan. 28.

Hardstyle will be just one of many of Aoki’s weapons on display at San Jose State this week. In addition to his classic remixes, audiences should keep an ear out for his new original work. He’s collaborated with seven great musicians, from Rick Rubin to Angger Dimas, to create a new collection of remixes for “A Light That Never Comes,” and at least one or two should be on tap in San Jose.

The Wobbleland massive EDM party returned to San Jose with a full lineup of DJs and producer, including Griz, Doctor P, Cookie Monsta and many more.

Photos by Metro photographer CJ Storm.