Playground magazine

It's no coincidence that the (now online) magazine that has always paid attention to quality electronic music, XLR8R, hasn't jumped on the EDM bandwagon; instead focusing on juke, trap and all things post-dubstep. It was a rockist landmark like Spin - which, when talking about the dance phenomenon, never got any further than psychedelic trance and superstar DJs like the late DJ AM - that first acknowledged a new episode in the evolution and popular implementation of club music, when it put Skrillex on the cover last autumn. It found in him what it needed: a good name, a recognisable face, a distinctive look and a sound that is a dance version of the crescendo driven energy of hard-core bands (the kind played during the transitions of MTV's reality shows). The impossible link between dubstep and Green Day.

After that cover (the symbolic starting point of this phenomenon, after which came cover stories in Rolling Stone and pieces in other nationwide magazines, proportionate to the man's revenues during the past year: 15 million dollars, a spot in the Forbes top 100 of best-selling musicians), everything was ready for dance music to enter a new stage in history. A repeated history (hello Pete Tong et al), but with the bright shine of the American way of life.

When the idea is put forward that electronic music is infiltrating the mainstream, it should be done with caution, because the false impression could be given that that's a valuable fact in itself. But it's rather the opposite: it's very worrying. In any case, what the youth in the United States is living right now (that same youth to which every rave weekend is like a 48-hour Spring Break, those who are flooding events like Coachella), is the same honeymoon and money-shower period that came over Europe between 1998 and 2006, the golden age of the superstar DJ (a phenomenon about which so many books have been written, which have their yearly supplement in DJ Mag's top 100 ranking in November). It had previously only manifested itself on American territory in isolated cases – for example with British ex-pats with a mansion in the hills, like Paul Oakenfold - but in Europe has been ever present in enclaves like Ibiza.

Granted, the global economic crisis (and certain saturation with the public) has made the shine of DJ booth divas like Paul Van Dyk, Armin Van Buuren, and Ferry Corsten somewhat less bright. They are not what they used to be in 2004. Tiësto - who would fill the Ajax stadium in Amsterdam with 20,000 people at the blink of an eye, and who achieved the sting of the century by playing a pre-recorded set at the Beijing Olympics opening ceremony in 2008 - isn't as famous as he used to be. He has now turned into (in spite of his attempts at sounding more underground) the last survivor of throw-away trance. Even so, they still earn elevated wages on Ibiza, where every year a bidding war takes place, comparable only to the world of professional football.

It would be easy to look at what's happening in the United States from a European viewpoint, somewhat condescendingly. If deadmau5 manages to attract 20,000 people at a rave in Las Vegas (doing the same kind of show for sensitive and impressionable eyes as, for example, Cirque du Soleil), we have to remember that there's nothing new about it. Tiësto and Armin Van Buuren had already filled up football stadiums. Maybe the latter pair offered a somewhat more raw sound (the nuances are very fine), but they were equally profitable, and with the same rock star-like peripheral phenomena (the magazine covers, the newspaper coverage, the TV interviews, the fan clubs, the massive votes for the aforementioned DJ Mag top 100). In fact, the popularity of the idea of the DJ in the United States is decisively associated with the unbearable lightness of being (a celebrity): Paris Hilton is a DJ, Steve Aoki is a DJ (and the brother of a model), Lindsay Lohan dated a DJ, and so on. And we haven't even spoken about the music yet. We'll do that tomorrow, promise.

[to be continued]