This eclectic yearly music festival has its roots in the underground techno scene of the mid-’90s. Since its acquisition by LA production company Insomniac, Audiotistic Bay Area has become a staple of the West Coast festival circuit. From hip-hop to EDM to turntablism, Audiotistic curates a diverse palette of music from artists across the globe in one multi-stage concert experience. The weekend-spanning party is at Shoreline Amphitheatre and features a seriously stacked bill. Performers include Juice Wrld, T.I., Alison Wonderland and Tiësto.

Audiotistic
Sat & Sun, 2-11pm & 2-10pm, $90+
Shoreline Amphitheatre, Mountain View

In a recent interview with Tiesto, the superstar DJ spoke on how inspiring it’s been playing for American crowds in the wake of the recent electronic dance music boom. He noted that stateside, crowds aren’t pigeon-holed in one style and are incredibly enthusiastic about the emerging sound. That enthusiasm was on full display last night at his sold-out show inside the San Jose State Events Center, the latest stop on his College Invasion tour.

As has become custom, neon colors and lots of skin was the dress code—all the better to dance with. There was even a tribal headdress or two bouncing along to the four-to-the-floor bass.
Opener Alvaro elicited a decent crowd reaction from the half-full house, ending his set with a few tracks that showcased the growing trap sound (see: Harlem Shake). The crowd hit at heavy simmer at about 8pm, with Quintino dropping crowd favorites and excitement built with electro DJ Tommy Trash taking the stage to a nearly full arena before Tiesto arrived.

PHOTOS: View the Metroactive Photo Gallery the Tiesto Show

When Tiesto took the stage at 9:30pm, it was clear that this was his party to rock. While his opening acts kept the pulse with minimal tech, Tiesto’s two-hour set was enhanced with a HD video intro that made previous motion banners seem amateur in contrast and EDM favorites like smoke cannons, lasers, flashing lights and a timed mass release of thousands of white balloons.

When the balloons finally dropped near the end of his set, the vibe was transcendent, with a sea of waving hands and deep, carnal bass. Surveying the scene midway through the set, Tiesto seemed to even have the rafters engaged. His crowd came to party and he was giving them exactly what they wanted.

At 10:30, a sea of moving bodies seemed in sync with Tiesto’s musical heartbeat and that fever pitch only intensified as he neared the end of his set. Dipping back into his catalogue, 2003 classic “Adagio For Strings” made an appearance, as did a portion of Zombie Nation’s seminal arena anthem “Kernkraft 400.”

Though the sweating, minimally clothed crowd was greeted outside by a damp, windy night, the spell of bad weather did little to stave off the post-show euphoria.

View more photos from the show.

The biggest DJ in the world is coming to San Jose. At the forefront of a recent American musical revolution, Dutch phenom Tiesto performs at the San Jose State Event Center on March 5, his only Bay Area stop, as part of his sold-out College Invasion tour.

With Electronic Dance Music (EDM) tied to the live, dance floor experience, a DJ’s notoriety stems more from the high-profile parties they’ve rocked than the singles they’ve released. Still, Tiësto’s cover of “Adagio for Strings” is likely the song that launched him into the dance stratosphere. It’s the track that caught the ear of the Olympic Committee, leading to a literal appearance on the world’s stage when he played the opening ceremony of the 2004 Olympic Games.

He’s a three-time winner of DJ Mag’s “Top 100” DJ poll (2002-2004); last year, he finished second behind fellow Dutchman Armin Van Buuren. While David Guetta and Calvin Harris have been making significant strides stateside, crafting dance pop collaborations with artists like Usher, Rihanna and Nicki Minaj, Tiësto maintains a line that straddles mainstream visibility and underground respect.

For those unaware of the clout he commands, a few facts: his weekly radio show, Tiësto’s Club Life, is the most popular music podcast on iTunes. He has garnered more than 300 million views on YouTube, 11 million likes on Facebook and one and a half million followers on Twitter.

In 2011, he performed before a crowd of over 26,000 inside LA’s Home Depot Center, the largest U.S. audience for a headline EDM gig. A few days before his San Jose gig, he’s back in LA to headline the 18,000-capacity Staples Center.

As for why Tiësto, a man who can play anywhere he pleases—he once turned down a gig at Madison Square Garden because it wouldn’t accommodate enough dancers on the floor—has chosen to tour American colleges, he explains they’re the key to EDM’s continued success.

“I think the college crowd is very important,” he says in a phone interview. “They are very energetic and into the music. That’s inspiring to play for. No matter how old you are, you always will remember your time in college. To be a part of that culture is amazing to me.”

Stateside, his crowd skews young—he says the demographic is “90 percent under 21”—but their youth offers him the opportunity to act as a gateway for newcomers. He calls the domestic EDM-obsessed crowd “very open-minded,” citing continually enthusiastic crowds despite diverse bills.

“They’re not pigeonholed into one style,” he says. “It’s very refreshing to play for [American] crowds because they are so into the music. In Europe, EDM has been there for many years so people are more used to it. It’s more new and exciting to play here.”

Though dance music was created in America, with offshoots of house and techno rising out of Chicago and Detroit, respectively, the music never grew outside of a passionate niche audience. “Electronica” had a wave of success stateside in the late 90s when the Prodigy, Fatboy Slim, Chemical Brothers and Moby enjoyed radio play, but the rave explosion felt in Europe never fully crossed back over the pond.

In 2011, Spin proclaimed America had finally been conquered by EDM. Dubstep, thanks to acts like San Jose native Bassnectar and Skrillex, has become huge and crossed over into the mainstream with fan base of mostly young music listeners.

Electric Daisy Carnival, the largest dance festival in North America, drew over 300,000 people to the outskirts of Las Vegas last year. Miami’s Ultra Music Festival (165,000) and New York’s Electric Zoo (110,000) experienced similar success. With ever-growing attendance numbers, downloads and chart successes, it seems EDM has finally returned home.

Recent term “EDM,” coined as a catch-all for dance music’s countless subgenres, has helped. In the past, new listeners would grow increasingly confused wading through terms like liquid drum and bass, deep house, progressive trance and electro. Though the new tag can be similarly confusing as a qualifier for a spectrum of sound and rhythm, Tiësto thinks the simplified terminology has aided its rise, equalizing the term with similarly vague titles jazz and rock.

Yet, dance music has always come with negative baggage, specifically the scene’s ties to recreational drug use. The rave boom almost goes hand-in-hand with the prevalent recreational use of ecstasy, which continues today with pure MDMA variant “molly”—a drug also referenced in most rap radio hits these days. Tiësto has long taken issue with the connection, symbolizing his stance by banning glow sticks, a rave staple, at his shows.

“I just wanted to show my crowd that I’m not part of that,” he says. “Obviously, some people will always do it, but the image of the glow sticks at the parties was really bad, especially in Europe. In comedy movies, you would see a traditional raver, and they would always show that he’s on drugs with glow sticks in his hands and in his mouth. I think we deserve a better image than that.”

For this tour, Tiësto has hand-selected a supporting bill that includes Australian electro DJ Tommy Trash and Dutch newcomers Alvaro and Quintino. Past tours included Avicii, Dada Life and Hardwell, whose stars all rose after gaining the Tiësto co-sign. “I think it’s something to be proud of,” he says. “It’s nice to see that I can help develop the scene.”

Asked why he’s endured over the years, Tiësto credits his steadfast belief in the scene he’s had a large hand in shaping into a global force. “I never really sold out,” he says, drawing a link to contemporaries with pop aspirations. “I’ve always stayed true to myself. People see it’s pure and it’s real.”

As for his recently-announced follow-up to 2009’s Kaleidoscope, he said he’s “probably eight tracks” into the release thanks to added studio time in the wake of a recent back injury.

“Try to make the best dance album ever—that’s my goal,” he offers before letting out a small laugh, aware of the loftiness of such a mark yet delivered with enough determination to suggest he’s not joking.

UPDATE:

The set times are out for Tiësto’s show in San Jose:

Tiësto • 9:30 – 11:30
Tommy Trash • 8:30 – 9:30
Quintino • 7:30 – 8:30
Alvaro • 6:45 – 7:30
John Beaver • 6:00 – 6:45

A list of prohibited items at the show (Is this a going a little overboard or fair for this type of event? ~ ed.):

Tiësto’s sold-out show on Oct. 18 at the Event Center at San Jose State was postponed this morning until March 5 due to a back injury.

Tiësto was advised by doctors to take October off to recover from his injury, which affects several dates on his Club Life College Invasion tour and his headlining show at the Staples Center in Los Angeles. Tickets for the October 18 show will be honored at the March 5 show.

“I hate to disappoint my fans and be told I have to sit still for a while, but I am relieved we were able to reschedule the dates,” Tiësto said in a release. “I’m looking forward to seeing you all very soon!”

The rescheduled dates:
6-Dec – San Diego Sports Arena – San Diego, CA
7-Dec – UIC – Chicago, IL
21-Dec – BMO Centre – Calgary, AB
19-Feb – OnCenter – Syracuse, NY
20-Feb – Washington Avenue Armory – Albany, NY
21-Feb – Mullins Center – Amherst, MA
22-Feb – Whittemore Center – Durham, NH
25-Feb – Sands Bethlehem Event Center – Bethlehem, PA
26-Feb – Bryce Jordan Center – State College, PA
27-Feb – EMU Convocation Center – Ypsilanti, MI
28-Feb – Nationwide Arena – Columbus, OH
2-Mar – Tiësto Club Life – STAPLES Center – Los Angeles, CA
5-Mar – San Jose Event Center – San Jose, CA
6-Mar – Save Mart Arena – Fresno, CA

We’re still waiting for confirmation from the Events Center at San Jose State University, but according to “the boss” Rick Ross, he’ll be stopping at the venue on Nov. 30 with Wale and Machine Gun Kelly on his Maybach Music Group Tour.

The tour stop was announced this morning on the MMG Tour website, but the Events Center says the show is still not confirmed and if there is an official announcement, it will arrive next week. Ross released one of the biggest rap albums of the year in July, God Forgives, I don’t, which debuted at No. 1 on the Billboard charts with the “3 Kings” collaboration with Jay Z and Dr. Dre.

Regardless, if the show is confirmed, the Events Center still has an excellent fall lineup with a sold-out stop by Tiesto on his college tour and Wiz Khalifa on Nov. 10 with a special appearance by Three 6 Mafia’s Juicy J.

The MMG Tour promo:

Wiz Khalifa – Work Hard Play Hard

Juicy J – Can’t Stop Us

Silicon Valley hosts a strong lineup of fall concerts with some of the biggest names in pop, indie rock and electronic music and the debut of SVSX.

Wobbleland
Aug. 31, 7pm; San Jose Civic; $50-$70. Some fans of Wobbleland have expressed disappointment that this year’s lineup isn’t loaded with the same dubstep star power as one that took San Francisco by storm in 2011. But they’re missing the point—nobody on that bill was famous yet outside of the electronic underground. Wobbleland is an underground party designed to let thousands of scantily clad fans get their spines rocked by these artists before they become phenoms. This year’s rave will pump untold decibels of bass into the San Jose Civic courtesy of headliner Flux Pavilion. Flux is best known for his Bassnectar-type dubstep anthem “Bass Cannon,” but fans of Kanye and Jay-Z are more likely to recognize his track “I Can’t Stop,” which was sampled on their “Who Gon Stop Me” album last year. The rest of the Wobbleland roster, aside from maybe Cypress Hill’s DJ Muggs, comes straight from the underground: Zomboy, Barenoize, Bare, Grizzly, NastyNasty, Megalodon and more.

VivaFest!
Sept. 8-16; downtown San Jose; Sept. 16 HP Pavilion show, 7pm, $30 and up. Creative director of VivaFest!, Dan Guerrero, has brought an epic vision and a flair for spectacle to what started out a couple of decades ago as a folksy tribute to the well-known but poorly understood Mexican mariachi tradition. Guerrero is the kind of producer who believes that if something is worth doing, it’s worth doing bigger, so it’s no surprise that the centerpiece of his show this year has Gigante in the title. I mean, the organizers of any festival celebrating Mexican culture would be beside themselves to have Latin music star Lila Downs; Chicano Cali favorites Ozomatli; Mariachi Vargas de Tecalitlan, which was responsible for popularizing mariachi internationally in the 1980s; and legendary cantina chanteuse Paquita la del Barrio. But Guerrero has wrapped all four of them into one show at HP Pavilion on Sept. 16, “Domingo Gigante: A Night of Stars.” The festival will also feature their yearly free Outdoor Feria del Mariachi the same day on HP’s arena green. Besides the Super Sunday extravaganza, there will be a film series, historical walks, mariachi and dance workshops, and more.

SVSX
Sept. 22; downtown San Jose
The South Bay music scene thrives off the intersection of underground culture and high-tech empire. It’s no surprise that in the land of start-ups, the music revolution of the last few years has been born in the garages and on the laptops of a new generation of talent. The Silicon Valley Sound eXperience—SVSX—is a showcase for that revolution, supporting the local music scene with stages on which to make the next advance. This debut year will feature the first SVSX music awards and a club crawl brimming with the best and brightest on the South Bay scene. Artists like Will Sprott, whose unique songwriting and arrangements with the Mumlers opened the floodgates to the wave of eclectic and sometimes unclassifiable bands that have risen up here in the last few years. Like Anya and the Get Down, whose mash-up of rock, reggae and dubstep threatens to break big at any moment. Like Careless Hearts, the Shitkickers and the other bands scheduled to perform. They are all the sound of the Silicon Valley experience.

Harmony by the Bay
Sept. 29, 2pm; Shoreline, Mountain View; $49.50-$79. The Harmony Festival in Santa Rosa was known for a weird mix of performers; last year’s bill featured the Flaming Lips, Primus and breakbeat master Chango B, along with bluegrass and Afrobeat. In March, organizers announced that, after 33 years, money woes had done in the three-day festival, at least for the time being—and then surprised everyone with the debut of this South Bay spin-off festival, a joint venture among Harmony’s organizers, KFOG and Live Nation. Pared down to a one-day, two-stage setup, HBTB attempts to carry over the eclecticism of its namesake, with alt headliners Kimbra, the Shins, Tegan and Sara, plus reggae-rockers the Dirty Heads, bluegrass fixture Alison Krauss, electro-tribal strangesters Beats Antique and reggae legend Jimmy Cliff.

As if it wasn’t hard enough getting a new summer music festival off the ground, the I Love This City festival scheduled to debut May 25 and 26 has apparently run into what are being called “production challenges” at The Lot at AT&T Park, and has been moved to Shoreline Amphitheatre in Mountain View. The move brings a few changes for the neon-and-glitter-ready raver’s paradise, as the festival attempts to bring together some of the big names in the EDM (Electronic Dance Music) craze.

Afrojack and Sebastian Ingrosso have been added to the Friday line-up, which also features James Murphy of LCD Soundsystem, as well as Duck Sauce, Steve Aoki, Datsik, the Crystal Method, Cut Chemist, Dirtyphonics, Holy Ghost!, AraabMuzik, Borgore, Cookie Monsta and more.

Saturday’s roster is still topped by Tiesto, David Guetta and Laidback Luke. Doctor P., Excision, Feed Me, Apparat, Kill the Noise, Felix Cartal, Jaguar Skills, Miles the DJ and others will also perform.

The location change also means that the festival can be extended to 11:30pm each night. There will be three stages, and the event is now open to 16 and over.

San Francisco ticketholders can catch a free charter bus from AT&T Park to Shoreline and back throughout the day (go here for the reservation service.

Festivalgoers who bought a ticket for the show at The Lot will be given a special wristband at Shoreline that gets them in to reserved seating.

Single day tickets are $50 for Friday, $60 for Saturday; two-day admission is $99.