Central Track Contributor
Mad Decent Block Party To Hit Dallas Labor Day Weekend.
In an interview that's already gone somewhat viral despite just getting posted to the Huffington Post this morning, acclaimed DJ and producer Diplo essentially put the rest of the EDM world on blast, lambasting his peers as boring and, worse, “interchangeable.”
His roundabout point, of course, isn't that everything about the EDM world is bad — just most things, is all.
Other things — such as his own Mad Decent label, through which Diplo not only releases his own efforts (both as a solo act and as half of Major Lazer), but also those of Rusko, Dillon Francis, Zeds Dead, Riff Raff, Zebra Katz and many others — are perfectly OK in his book and well representative of what things are like, as Diplo says in that interview, “in these streets.”
Which brings us to this street-related news: Also this morning, Mad Decent announced that its annual summer Block Party series will expand to 13 destinations in 2013, including a Dallas stop in the parking lot and West End streets surrounding Club Zouk during Labor Day weekend on Saturday, August 31. Already, $20 tickets are on sale for the Dallas show right here, and, we should note, although no lineups for any of the parties have yet to be announced, tickets to the bashes in at least three of the cities (Brooklyn, Los Angeles and Philadelphia) have already sold out.
As for the Dallas bash, for which tickets appear to still be available, its local production will be handled by the team at Highland Entertainment, the same dudes responsible for the annual Lights All Night parties in Fair Park each New Year's Eve.
As for the reasoning behind the Zouk location, Highland's Hank Keller says that was more Mad Decent's call than his.
“They wanted it to be right in the middle of downtown, which this area is,” he says. “That's the theme of the event, really.”
It's also a large space, which helps. Keller says he's expecting 6,000 attendees at Dallas' inaugural Block Party affair, which will be immediately followed by an after-party inside Zouk itself.
“We thought about putting it over by the American Airlines Center at Victory Plaza,” Keller says. “But we realized after sitting in on some city meetings that the decibel level there is, like, 70 dBs. Otherwise, all the glass around there will just shatter. So this location works better in that regard, too.”
Update at 3:55 p.m. on Tuesday, April 30: Mad Decent just rolled out the initial bill for this bash. Major Lazer, Dillon Francis, Baauer, Flosstradamus, Griz and Nadastrom will all perform, as will some other as-yet-unannounced performers. Oh, and those early-bird tickets have sold out, too. So, if you wanna check this show out, you'll have to wait for the general on-sale date, which, unfortunately, has yet to be announced. Oh well!
