Skrillex, Avicii, Steve Aoki and more join first all-EDM touring festival in the States.
By Adam Stewart
Photo: IDentity Tour
For the DJ, touring is a way of life: late nights, early flights and long bus rides. For Kaskade (born Ryan Raddon), however, it's also his upcoming summertime adventure.
Kicking off in early August, the inaugural IDentity Festival is the first-ever "EDM only" tour, combining massive beats, A-list talent and an al fresco sound experience all (hopefully) in your neck of the woods.
"IDentity came to me and said, 'We've got an interesting idea. We want to take a touring electronic music festival on the road,' " Kaskade told MTV News recently in Las Vegas. "Electric Daisy is popping up in all of these other cities, Bonnaroo has got an EDM tent, and Coachella's tent is bigger every year. So it was just a matter of time before someone said, 'Let's get one of these parties together and just move it around.' So they came to me, and I thought the idea was awesome."
It's no surprise that, sometimes, Middle America gets the short end of the stick when it comes to hosting big-name acts, especially in the EDM world. But IDentity aims to change all that, bringing three massive stages to each city: the Skullcandy Main Stage, the Dim-Mak Festival Stage and the Underground stage, each with its own crowd-pleasing lineups and state-of-the-art sound that promises to leave the masses' senses properly tingled.
"It's not only New York and L.A. who love this music," he said. "There's all these places around the country that might not get the opportunity to see everyone."
Including the likes of Skrillex, Avicii, Steve Aoki, Pete Tong, LA Riots and the Manufactured Superstars, among others, IDentity is suitable for EDM fans of every ilk. The massive bus tour kicks off August 11 at the Verizon Wireless Music Center in Noblesville, Indiana, and then snakes throughout the rest of the lower 48 — 20 cities in all. Next up, the tour heads back east, hitting the PNC Bank Arts Center in Holmdel, New Jersey, on August 14, Charlotte, North Carolina, on the 16th and New York's Jones Beach Amphitheater on the 21st. The caravan then heads south, darting through Atlanta's Lakewood Amphitheatre, then Tampa and Miami's Bayfront Park and finally heading to the Left Coast by way of Texas, New Mexico, California and ultimately the Pacific Northwest.
"These are like 10,000-person outdoor amphitheaters, which is cool," Kaskade said. "The venues, like the Gorge in Seattle, are these beautiful, really cool outdoor amphitheaters that typically have never housed anything like this, so I think it's a really interesting opportunity. You Google them [to see], like, 'Who else has played here? Dave Matthews and Phish!' — all of these really cool touring bands that do these types of things in the summer."
In preparation for the tour, Kaskade has kicked off his second year of residency at Las Vegas' sprawling day club Encore Beach, in addition to giving a little extra love to his upcoming album, being produced in his brand-new Santa Monica studio — sans the porcelain.
"For many years, I actually had my computer in my bathroom — for noise purposes — and I drilled a hole through the wall into the studio and ran the chords through it," he recalled with a laugh. "People were always like, 'Why was the computer in the toilet? What if it overflows?' People were always concerned about that. Anyway, I'm not in the bathroom anymore. ... It's like my first truly proper studio!"
Will you check out Kaskade if the IDentity Festival comes to your town? Let us know in the comments!
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