ON THE FLOOR
Above & Beyond
Heaving Las Vegas We take a trip to the hub of the Las Vegas dance music explosion — Marquee Nightclub and Dayclub — to discover what makes it tick…
V
egas. Home to more excess than even Hunter S. Thompson could cope with, albeit with a head full of
acid. But underneath all the madness and neon lies an emerging cornerstone of the US dance scene, brought to life over the annual US Memorial Day Weekend holiday through a host of international DJ talent at the renowned Marquee Nightclub and Dayclub. Memorial Day Weekend is a Big Deal in the US, but an even bigger deal in Vegas. And there are few more — if any — stylish places in the city to celebrate it than Marquee, located in the plush confines of the Cosmopolitan hotel. Often spoken of as the best club in the city and one of the high rollers in the wider US, Marquee is indeed epic. It’s everything a high-class Vegas nightclub should be, full of champagne-soaked VIP booths, blackjack tables with a $100 minimum bet, impossibly glamorous and flexible dancers, and a soundsystem to die for, which is being put to good use over the weekend.
Fedde Le Grand kicks off this cavalcade of glamour, with a suitably big-room set of mega breakdowns, giant vocal lines and energetic electro-house, amid various glitter cannons. He then steps it up a gear, rolling into a stomping house set, interspersed with ‘Insomnia’ and ‘Praise You’, finishing surprisingly on ‘Kernkraft 400’. The crowd lap it up, and continue to go wild when Benny Benassi takes over, firing into a set that delves between jumpy house and chugging electro. Looking out into the audience, it takes a while to get used to the sight of a crowd
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in shirts, shoes and pristine dresses waving glowsticks around like it’s 1989.
Vegas is clearly a lot to wrap your head round. The following day, DJ Mag chats to the very affable UK trance act Above & Beyond, before their evening set. Holding a residency at Marquee’s poolside dayclub, and having played Las Vegas since 2007, members Paavo Siljamäki and Jono Grant are well- placed to assess the situation. “It feels like Vegas is really at a tipping point,” says Paavo. “Next year, so many superclubs are opening. Whether there will be enough people for those clubs, I don’t know, but dance music is really big in America at the moment.” “It’s an interesting mix of people here,” says Jono. “On the one hand, you get real hardcore clubbers from LA because it’s close, but you also get a lot of people from smaller cities around North America, and then you get the holiday crowd. It’s a good opportunity to play to people who don’t always know much about you. We’re used to preaching to the converted, so this is harder work.” Although, the task is made a little easier by the inherent energy of the crowd. “Vegas has that really raw, wild party aspect to it,” says Paavo. “It’s actually similar to Ibiza in that way.”
A&B’s set is by far the bassiest yet, but still sounding crisp and refined. They start off with a heavy, euphoric vibe, breathy female vocals set against smooth basslines and melodic synths, and feed into harder techno spliced with trance, far heavier than their recorded material. As predicted, some (though not all) of the audience haven’t
encountered A&B before, but they warm to them instantly.
It’s easy to initially label the majority of the Vegas audience as a party crowd looking for big-room hits (and certainly those people are here), but the reaction to Above & Beyond’s techno-heavy set proves Vegas to be more than receptive to new styles.
The whole scene-specific ideals that exist in Europe are simply not as prevalent here. Of course, defined scenes and dance music snobbery exist, particularly within, say, NYC and LA, but the Vegas attitude is refreshingly inclusive.
Speaking of parties, the following day the beautiful and the toned appear en masse, seeking a party headed by Kaskade — Ryan Raddon, a US producer pivotal to the US electronic scene — who has been honing his craft for over a decade. The previous night, Raddon ripped up the Chelsea Ballroom — essentially Marquee’s sister club — with the immense opening night of his ‘Freaks Of Nature’ tour, featuring stunning visual backdrops and enough low frequencies to melt the face of even the most seasoned bass-cadet. Today, however, is party time at Marquee’s dayclub. Kaskade plays a storming three-hour set, shifting the melodic house sound of his recorded material into a heavier, headier exploration of bassy, techy electro breaks and trance house bangers. The biggest-ever Marquee daytime crowd lose their shit for pretty much the entire thing.
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After his set, Raddon remarks that Vegas is in a transitional period. “I don’t think there’s a Vegas scene, per se. In some ways, it’s similar to Ibiza — there are a lot of nightclubs and it’s more an attraction to the town. But now, [EDM] is kind of crossing over to pop culture. “This is one of the biggest spots in the world right now, arguably,” he continues. “Obviously, Ibiza’s a very important place and there’s lots of money there, but Vegas is competing with that, because the casinos have huge budgets to work with.” And with big budgets come bigger and better shows, but as Raddon points out, there are some barriers. “It’s harder to play stuff that’s groove- centric, that sound isn’t playing so well
Pics: LOREN WOHL
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