Though there’s no clear moment that marks precisely when electronic music exploded, Sunrise electronic festival co-promoter Robert Mine really started to see things shake up in 2010, right around the time he and his partner, Santi Torrecilla, started booking large electronic events in San Jose.

Their third annual Sunrise event arrives July 3 at the San Jose Civic Auditorium with Canadian producer Datsik, DJ Doctor P and Detroit producer Butch Clancy, as well as Trolley Snatcha, Pegboard Nerds and Getter.

The past two Sunrise parties—along with the annual winter electronic variation “Sunset”—have been so successful that they’ve consistently sold out the 3,000-person capacity venue.

Some of Sunrise’s success, as well as that of electronic music events in general, can be attributed to how the parties have evolved compared to traditional rock shows. People go into them expecting light shows, crazy costumes, exciting visuals and lots of eye candy in the crowd.

“Other genres are more focused on the music itself,” Mine says. “We make it more of an experience for all the senses. So music is just as important as the visual experience, which is just as important as the atmosphere. We want people to be completely immersed in another world.”

This year, the promoters are looking to enhance other elements of the experience. They’ll be setting up a Twitter channel for attendees that the DJ on stage will be able to see while performing. He’ll be able to talk back to the audience, or even alter his set accordingly.

“We’re trying to break down the wall that separates the performer and the audience and try and develop ways that they can communicate with each other,” Mine says.

Rather than fighting technology and telling people to put their smartphones away, they are encouraging people to use them as a means to get consumed in the event.

The next step is to set up video streams. Though they probably won’t be able to do it this year, by their next event they hope to set up several streams that people at home can watch, but more important, the audience at the event will see the streams and get a more in-depth view of what’s happening all around them. Some ideas include setting up streams in the backstage area, perhaps one of the audience and a close-up of the DJs performing.

Sunrise
Wednesday, July 3; 8pm; $50/$55 VIP
San Jose Civic Auditorium

Mike Park, owner of Asian Man Records, has done his fair of touring over the last 25 years, whether it was with local ska-punk legends Skankin’ Pickle, the Chinkees, the B. Lee Band or with his solo material. He takes and interesting detour with his latest project: touring with popular children’s act Yo Gabba Gabba.

The tour with Yo Gabba Gabba comes to the San Jose Event Civic Center on Tuesday March 5th. We caught up with Mike to talk about the experience, thus far.

You are on a three-month tour with Yo Gabba Gabba. What exactly are you doing during the show?

I am the super music friend. The live show follows the TV format, so they try to incorporate parts of the TV show live. My segment comes in at the 15 minute mark; I play one song and then I’m done. It’s the easiest gig I’ve ever had in my life. I did one of the live shows last year and the right people saw it. When they discussed this year’s tour, my name was thrown into the mix and somehow they picked me.

This isn’t your first foray into kid’s music. Your album Smile is an accessible kid’s album that adults will enjoy listening to as well. What made you decide to get into kid’s music?

Being a dad of two young kids had me fiddling around on guitar making up silly songs. It made my toddlers smile and from there I just started writing songs. It’s a lot of fun and I hope to do a lot more of this in the future.

What have the Yo Gabba Gabba shows been like?

They’re quite surreal, to be honest. I’ve never been on a tour of this magnitude before. I get nervous before every performance, but that’s normal for me. It’s the same if I’m playing in front of 15,000 people or if I’m playing in front of 30 people. That’s what makes it still worthwhile for me at least. But it’s been a blast playing some beautiful historic theaters across the U.S. that otherwise I’d never get the chance to perform at.

How do children compare to adults as audience members?

They don’t go on message boards and talk shit about you. They’re just having fun and they don’t care what’s cool or not. That’s the big difference. I love playing music for both adults and children, but I’m having a lot more fun lately playing for kids.

Who are some of the other special musical guests that you’ve been on the road with?

Basically, the company gave me a green light to invite guests to join me on stage, so I’ve just had friends from my time in music come on out in different cities. Thus far I’ve had members of the following bands: Darkest Hour, Lawrence Arms, Big D and the Kids Table, Bouncing Souls, Suicide Machines, Lita from WWE, MU330, The Pilfers, Bomb the Music Industry, Five Iron Frenzy.

Do your kids come to see the show when you play locally? What do they think of seeing Dad on stage with Yo Gabba Gabba?

Yes, they definitely are coming to the show on Tuesday. I’m not quite sure what they think? It’s hard to gauge what goes through the mind of a 4 and 6 year old. They used to listen to Smile a lot more but these days it’s been a lot of Toots and the Maytals. Ha!

Biz Markie is also on this tour with you, right? Have you been hanging out with Biz?

He’s an interesting person. He has his blu-tooth connected 24/7 and he’s constantly on the phone and so you have no idea if he’s talking to you or somebody else? But at least he knows my name, which is more than Tom Morello after touring with him for three weeks.

Yo Gabba Gabba! Live! “Get the Sillies Out” comes to the San Jose Civic Center on Tuesday March 5th.

Jeff Abel has jumped into dubstep like a masked bandit, brandishing heavy-metal weapons and leaving chaos and broken speakers in his wake. While the genre is known for rumbling basslines and lots of head tossing among its fans, the DJ and producer known as Excision lets the listener tap into their inner bat-munching, heavy-metal chi. He performs Friday at San Jose Civic Auditorium alongside Paper Diamond, Minnesota, Vaski and Getter.

Abel grew up in Canada, which has an electronic music scene as abundant as the Yukon Territory tundra. It took him a while to find his niche. When he first heard hardcore breakbeat group Prodigy’s The Fat of the Land‚ as a youngster, he spent years searching for similar music with no success until 2005, when he discovered the Vex’d album Degenerate and dove into the dubstep scene. Since then, he has emerged as one of the most popular dubstep DJs with synapse-bursting, sold-out performances across the country. “[I’ve headlined shows] with 10,000 or 20,000 people at epic venues like Red Rocks in Colorado or the Gorge in Washington. Looking out onto the crowd and the awesome view and seeing so many people rocking out to such nasty music is a pretty righteous feeling,” he says.

Excision has just embarked upon his Execution tour, a production rivaling the complexity of some of the top names in EDM. The stage crew will have their hands full with lasers, C02 jets, low-lying fog machines and snow machines—yes, snow machines.

Fans attending the Feb. 8 show at the San Jose Civic Auditorium for Sunset would be wise to bring their ear plugs, as the DJ will be unleashing more than 100,000 watts of sound, against a stage backdrop of 420 square feet of true-3-D, video-mapped animations using Serato technology to stay perfectly in sync with 50 to 60 tracks in his set, with videos designed by a team of 50 animators from around the globe. That mastery of technology, as much as his unique heavy-metal dubstep sound, is one of the main draws to his shows. “I really believe that the way we are putting it together sets down a new path for electronic music performance,” he says.

But Excision has more tricks up his hoodie. “We will always be working hard to stay at least a few steps ahead of the rest of the industry,” Abel says. And San Jose, the hub of all things digital, will be one of the first cities to determine if Excision really is that kind of maverick. Paper Diamond, Minnesota, Vaski and Getter are also on the bill.

While masses of shoppers were pillaging local shopping malls, gangs of drug-crazed kids stripped down to candy bracelets and funny masks—at least that’s what mainstream media would like you to think—for an EDM Massive at San Jose Civic Auditorium. The party was, in fact, pretty typical for big DJ events these days, with no major incidents as some of the top international touring DJs performed in San Jose.

Metro photographer C.J. survived the bass assault and returned with these photos:

It’s official: Electronic Dance Music is mainstream. From the Grammy-nabbing, high-grossing wobble fests of Skrillex to the schizophrenic hip-hop hooks of Diplo to the surging house beats of David Guetta, EDM has expanded far beyond teenagers gnawing flashing binkys in a crumbling warehouse in an old shipyard.

The music industry, on a 10-year juice fast of plummeting record sales, is devouring the trend. Unlike traditional bands, which require a crew and multiple band members and instruments to put on a show, most EDM artists bring their laptops—and that’s it. It’s been reported by the New York Times that top DJs like Deadmou5 and Tiesto can pocket $1 million for a festival appearance and $10 million for a Las Vegas nightclub residency. Realizing these shows are like Cheesecake Factory entrees for their bottom line, promoters are churning out EDM festivals like a Twinkie industrial unit in the 1960s, from the migrating Electric Daisy Carnival to the Ultra Music Festival in Florida.

Some are comparing the EDM movement to the housing bubble or dot-com IPOs—a cheek-flapping rise followed by the inevitable dubstep drop. However, EDM represents a cultural shift, like rock ’n’ roll was for baby boomers, and promises to leave a permanent tattoo on young music lovers growing up with the stuff. Between the adolescent identity and subsequent nostalgia fans associate with it, and the low cost/high profit margins for artists and promoters, EDM is not going away anytime soon. And as much as it’s a boon to the music industry, the deep-seated passion of the artists and the fans are what has and will sustain this movement.

San Jose is getting in on the act, hosting the 7th annual Give Thanks concert at the newly renovated San Jose Civic Auditorium on Friday, November 23rd. The show features artists such as Showtec, Manufactured Superstars, Dirtyphonics, and up and coming Russian beat maker Arty. The latter, born Artyom Stolyarov, is a 23-year-old producer and DJ who has made a name for himself with a prolific body of work created in three short years. Endorsed by the likes of Skrillex and Paul van Dyk, and rocketing to No. 25 on the 2011 list of the Top 100 DJ’s by DJ Magazine, Arty already roams with the best of them.

Arty plays a signature classic house style that can be twirl-in-a-meadow euphoric or drag-you-onto-the-dance-floor-by-your-hair manic, and he loves his rising crescendos. Currently touring the world at a torrid pace (Netherlands, UK and South Korea in late October before his current North American tour), he somehow finds the time to record singles, host a radio show and have an active Twitter account.

Arty is no stranger to all-consuming work schedules, however. When he was just a budding EDM artist back in Russia, fresh off seven years of formal music schooling, Arty “spent 15 to 16 hours a day making music like nothing else existed.”

“Very few things have changed since that moment,” he says. “I just started to travel a lot, and all music-making happens usually on the road now. But still, it’s all about passion and beautiful melodies.”

YOUNG AND FAMOUS Arty back stage at Ruby Skye in San Francisco before a recent gig. // Photo by Mark Portillo

He might be raking in a bit more dough and getting more praise, but it all goes back to his love for electronic music, having been weaned on EDM demigods Axwell (Swedish House Mafia), Deadmau5 and Eric Prydz. One thing that has changed for Arty as a result of his rising-star status is that instead of just listening to SHM on his ear buds, he gets to mix with the Nordic DJ himself. “My collaboration dream came true. We’re working with Axwell on a track together. It takes a lot of time, but I hope we finish it,” he said.

Some guys might get caught up in the glitz. Some guys might get burnt out. While no one is immune, it seems like Arty has a chance. He still claims to get a warm fuzzy feeling after a great show or finishing a new track. That feeling, along with the support of his close-knit family, is what can keep him grounded amid the strobe light flashes of success and challenge.

While the Civic Center and Arty’s team of managers and promoters are probably pretty stoked that, as an EDM artist, his shows are as cost and labor-efficient as that Hong Kong space-saver apartment on YouTube, Arty says he just wants to see as many people as possible have an amazing time. That’s what will keep them coming back for more, long after they age out of half-shaved heads and glow sticks.

More info on the Give Thanks Festival.