DJ Steve Aoki has a lot of new projects on his plate
Electronic dance music's superstar DJ Steve Aoki has many new projectson his turntable
It's just past 2am on one of those "what happens in Vegas, stays in Vegas" Saturday nights, and a capacity crowd of more than 3,000 revellers inside the Strip's epically proportioned nightclub Hakkasan Las Vegas are tripping the light fantastic. To the pummelling oontz-oontz-oontz of electro bass, they are dancing and drinking with hedonistic abandon when Steve Aoki decides it's time for cake.
A live wire in skinny jeans, the DJ leaps from behind his turntables to a narrow ledge ringing the DJ booth, holding a vanilla-frosted layer cake the size of a small boogie board. Between signs bearing the messages "Please cake me" and "I need the cake", Aoki spots his quarry: a grinning twenty-something bro with outstretched arms.
The DJ hurls the cake, splattering the guy and everyone around him with enough of the sugary confection to provoke an ecstatic release that ripples through the crowd like electricity. This is hardly a spontaneous gesture: up to a dozen times each show, performing worldwide more than 225 days a year, Aoki flings cake at the crowd.
"Some people are like, 'That's so … wrong,'" Aoki says. "But I'm not caking people out of hate. It's a love connection. Dance music is an emotional journey. It's how well you can make people feel something they haven't felt." In a conversation laced with F-bombs, the DJ adds: "The best part to me is post-cake. After the cake has hit their face, they turn around so the whole crowd can see: they're on top of the … world."
But as much as the scene at Hakkasan is business as usual for one of electronic dance music's busiest touring acts - a DJ turned indie record label owner and music producer who earned his stripes as the rowdy figurehead for Los Angeles' trend-setting dance music scene during the past decade - Aoki's cake toss that night can also be viewed as a kind of opening salvo: as he embarks on a game-changing suite of new initiatives, he's lobbing more than cake to change the shape of his career.
Late next month, Aoki will drop , the most ambitious - and uncharacteristically intellectual - effort of his career. The first instalment of a two-album collection focuses on themes of futurism, evolving technology and scientific innovation, the record features Aoki's synth-driven, rapid-beats-per-minute collaborations with a cross-section of modern musicdom including multi-platinum hitmaker Will.i.am and arena-rocking emo-pop quartet Fall Out Boy.
