Summerburst Gothenburg 2013

 After the great experience with Summerburst in Stockholm we had last year, the GoLive party crew and I decided to go for the Gothenburg one this year in mid June. The 2-day festival was held at the Nya Ullevi stadium with room for 25.000 ravers. The weather was excellent both days, so we got to party in the sun for to whole days.

We started out with some nice electro tunes from Russian Arty, followed by Steve Angello's baby brother AN21 with lots of great progressive tracks. Afterwards, fellow Swedes Cazzette took the stage followed by the usual antics from "DJ" Steve Aoki and topped of with pop DJ David Guetta. The energy at the stadium was high, everybody was in a good mood and love was in the air. I gotta say, neither Steve Aoki or Guetta are among my favorites. Aoki seems to use valuable set time to fool around with cakes and inflatable boats while a prerecorded mix plays in the background. I would prefer him to skip all that and focus on the music. Guetta is just to stupid looking to be taken seriously and he just plays all the safe popular tracks, many of which is his own featuring a variety of pop artist. The highlight of the day had to be Arty, Cazzette and AN21. Don't get me wrong, we had an amazing day with plenty of Rosé Champagne, bootleg vodka and redbull and plenty of soon, but the headliners was a bit forgettable. More was to come though as day 2 came...

We arrived at the stadium around 3 PM, just in time to order more Champagne and Redbull for our nutsack smuggled vodka (hard liqueur is not legal in that kind of venues in Sweden) and to catch one of my electro favorites, Swedish Albin Myers take the stage. He's always great, very energetic, lost of movement and gestures besides the usual "index-finger in the air" or the "both hands in the air" moves. Another Swede took over the decks (they have plenty of talent over there), Otto Knows delivered a great high energy progressive house set topped of with his summer anthem from last year Million Voices - imminent goosebumps!

Young dutch superstar Hardwell was up next, he had a gig in Copenhagen the same night, so I guess that's why he played so early, as he should have had a later slot amongst the headliners. Hardwell absolutely ripped Nya Ullevi apart with hardcore dutch electro house combined with his own melodic sing along tracks, not to forget the mega hit Spaceman - more goosebumps! The rather ungrateful task to follow Hardwell was left with W&W, former trance dudes gone house, surprised very positively, sending us all into outer space with their latest trancy/progressive hits "Lift Off!" and "Thunder".

Time for a breather - and a stage change, Swedish Galavant played a short in between half hour show with some live singing, but we did really pay attention as we went to re-energize in the food court area. We got back as German super talent Zedd took over with more great electro and melodic bangers, including his own hits Spectrum and Clarity - I even think I saw someone shed a tear during Clarity whilst I was busy having goosebumps again. But our euphoria could get even higher. Yet another Swedish rising star was on decks. Alesso lifted us even higher into the stratosphere with plenty of feel good "scream along" prog house hits, including the monster "Calling" he did with Jedi master Ingrosso - just when I thought I was done having goosebumps... Great warm up for The King - Axwell.

I've seen him a couple of times now, and he never seems to stop amazing me. We a surgeons precision, who played carefully selected and very effective tracks to take us on our 1 ½ hour final ride into Nirvana. His set included quite a few SHM tracks like Greyhound and the not yet released Axwell/Ingrosso collab "We Come, We Rave, We Love" featured on the Final SHM world tour, the new one "Center of the Universe" as well as old tunes like "Heart Is King" and and "Leave The World Behind" in yet another mashup. I think I finally lost my mind when he dropped "In My Mind", my very top house summer anthem. All hail - Axwell is King!

What an amazing weekend in Gothenburg - we all left the lovely city the next day feeling very fulfilled and ready for more Summerburst next year.

Moombah is the new black

OK, so here's the low down on Moombahton, the new black in EDM, that's taking all the hype from dubstep these days. It's around 108-110 bpm (dubstep is around 70, progressive house around 128), so it's slower than house music but faster than dubstep. I shares the same sound library as electro and even dubstep (often called moombahcore in that respect). It's got a very seductive almost latin vibe to it, that makes you want to move and oh, girls look super hot when dancing to moombah, so it's highly club friendly and thus, every respectable DJ has a moombah section in their set today.

The legend goes, that Dave Nada, one half of Nadastrom, was mixing the Afrojack remix of Moombah by Silvio Ecomo and Chuckie mixed with a slower reggaeton track, so it all ended up around the 108/110 bpm, and people seems to respond rather well to that. Since, noted artists like Skrillex, Knife Party, Diplo and the good sir Francis Dillon, to name a few, has been putting out moombah tracks.

Dillon Francis, in particular, has been the frontrunner for the new subgenre, and was the first to get the top spot on the Beatport top 5 release chart back in February 2012. I was so lucky to see Dillon Francis at UMF in Miami back in March, and was instantly smitten both by the subgenre as such and by Mr. Dillon Francis as a performer and artist. While Fatboy Slim and Justice were playing at the main stage, in front of 100.000 strong crowd, Dillon rocked the small, almost tiny, Annie Mac stage in the far end corner, right by the water, under the palm trees, with soothing sounds of moombah making the 200 or so dedicated moombah fans move in the evening heat. I can safely say, that this set was among my personal top 3 of the UMF, competing against mega-stars like Skrillex, Avicii, Armin van Buuren and Afrojack etc..

That was why I didn't hesitate a second taking the drive from Copenhagen to Gothenburg last weekend, when I saw he was playing a nightclub up there (thank you Siavosh!). He played a very varied set, not only moombah, like in Miami, but included hit tracks from every electro subgenre and we had a blast in the back popping the bubbles and dancing the night away. We were so lucky to meet him after the show and thank him for both the shows in Miami and that great night in Gothenburg. Very nice guy, I must say, who also likes to rock the suit and tie, as he said. :)

Please find a couple of my favorite moombah tracks below and enjoy!

Angger Dimas - Kitchen (Original Mix)

Valentino Khan & Will Bailey - Rukus 

Clockwork - Hulk (Dillon Francis Remix) 

Nadastrom - i!! 


Bonus info
Kairo Kingdom, a brand spanking new electro group from Frankfurt, Germany, came out of nowhere this spring in 2012 on the Lazy Rich label Big Fish. So far they have released five tracks in different subgenres, from electro house/complextro (Crazy Rock), to glitch hop (One Two), drum n' bass/dubstep (Dead Sound), moombah (Boombox) to dirty dutch electro (Das Knarz). Each a very solid attempt in the respective subgenres. Especially One Two does it for me, I got it pretty much on repeat on the iPhone these days. They deserved a spot in this post, not only because of them jumping on the moombah-wagon and fitting the theme of this Journal, but simply because of their excellent display of versatility and the well produced music. There are the Swiss army knife of electro. They refuse to be categorized. Just like my beloved Knife Party did a year or so ago when they took my heart by storm (new EP Rage Valley out May 28th btw!). So go check them out on their Soundcloud and be the first of your friends to buy that shit afterwards!

Kairo Kingdom - One Two

Kairo Kingdom - BoomBox

Kairo Kingdom - Crazy Rock