THE DON OF DANCE:
“You have to keep current, which I enjoy; it’s not tough for me. It’s what keeps me interested and alive; I still have the same love and energy towards what we do as I did the first day we started” he says over the phone from LA on Friday afternoon. The dance music mogul has kindly agreed to chat with DJ Mag about his booming promotion company Insomniac ahead of their busiest festival season to date.
The Electric Daisy Carnival name was chosen by Insomniac partner Philip Blaine, but the face most often associated with the leading event brand in the Insomniac portfolio is that of 38 year-old CEO Pasquale Rotella; who was recently named the most powerful person in dance music by Inthemix. Publicly acknowledged as one of the driving forces behind the modern American dance music explosion, Rotella’s EDC brand has grown to include a massive “Road to EDC Vegas” tour which sees stops in New York and Chicago before landing in Las Vegas for the flagship event in late June. For the first time ever this year, EDC crosses the Atlantic to hold its inaugural European edition in London this July, followed by stops in Puerto Rico and Orlando to round out festival season.
“When I was 15 or 16 years old and I was looking to get inspired within the dance community, I would look to London. The culture there, the excitement in dance music was something I fed off and got inspired by, so to be able to go there and produce an event in the middle of the city where they had the Olympics, it’s exciting and I’m really grateful for the response that we got” says Rotella of his first step into the European market, which has already sold over 20,000 tickets.
London and Chicago are this year’s additions on the ever-expanding EDC circuit, with the carnival being a welcome addition to the booming dance music scene in Chicago. Despite being the original birthplace of house music, the third largest city in the US has not been known as a dance music or festival destination around the world. This is quickly changing, as this summer the metropolis is hosting five enormous 3-day events, including of course EDC, which kicks off the festival season at the Chicagoland Speedway with a newly minted camping component, which Rotella is particularly excited about. “I’m looking forward to see what kind of energy that [the camping] is going to bring to the festival experience”.
The Chicago lineup includes a large assortment of talent ranging from marquee names like Armin van Buuren, Eric Prydz, Avicii, Fedde Le Grand, Sebastian Ingrosso and Tiesto to the likes of hometown heroes Kaskade and Bad Boy Bill along with local favourite
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PASQUALE ROTELLA BRINGS HIS LEGENDARY PARTY TO CHICAGO AND LONDON, UK “I would never sacrifice the quality of our events or the happiness of our fans to make an extra buck.
There are very few major music festivals that have gained such notoriety and mainstream acceptance in western civilization over such a short period of time as Coachella. Since 1999, Coachella has grown into a behemoth and every spring in Indio Valley, California, the hottest acts in all of music take centre stage. Hosting legendary acts such as Daft Punk and Chemical Brothers many times over, Coachella is not only an iconic festival for indie, rock, and hip-hop fans, but it lends a great deal of its stage space for those seeking some quality electronic dance music. The following is our take on weekend two of the festival.
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Skyler Mendoza. While the musical programming is superb, Rotella insists: “Electric Daisy Carnival is about representing all art forms, not just music”. This sentiment is evident as Insomniac chose to include visual artists on their latest lineup release for Vegas, including the newly acquired Rock Box, the Wide Awake art cart, and Vello Virkhaus providing groundbreaking visual art with his company V Squared Labs, which is also supporting the brand new experience that EDC is launching this year in the dessert.“Vello is amazing; he’s going to create content that’s never been seen before. There’s something that we’re doing called The Night Owl Experience, it’s not yet finalized, but it’s going to be a show more than a performance. We’ve assembled a soundtrack which takes you through the last 20 years of music, and Vello is making custom graphics that go along with some of the songs.”
As if running six editions of the world’s most popular dance music festival among an event portfolio of nearly a dozen brands isn’t enough, Rotella has his sights set on even more expansion within the music industry including a label and management agency, as well as a new club. “Right now there are only 20 of us who do all this. We’re all running on all cylinders, and we’re definitely going to add to the team this year and finalize things like our label and the management side. We’re searching for people through our discovery project, and if we find someone that is interested in doing a deal and being on our management company and releasing stuff on our label, we’ll do that. That is definitely in the near future.
Of course we had to ask if there were any plans for EDC Canada on the horizon, and Rotella confirmed that a potential Canadian edition of the mega-festival is still in the pre-planning stages. “I’ve looked at venues from a distance. I’ve been to Canada once for Shambhala, I camped out there for 3-4 days and had a great time. Recently we’ve been doing EDC in parking lots and transforming them into festival sites, but I’m really over it, it’s not what I want it to be. If I find the right venue in Canada, and the city welcomes the show, then we would love to bring an event there. Those are the two important things; having the right venue, and the local government not being against it. If we’re welcomed there, we’d love to do a show. We get a lot of people who
www.djmag.ca
PHOTO BY CARLOS RODAS FOR EDM MAGAZINE
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