While the continued surge in the popularity of dance music has provided a platform for many genuinely talented artists to come to the fore, it can be argued that it’s also produced its share of superficial buffoons who exploit the genre’s worst excesses and turn it into a schtick.
Yes, we’re talking about Steve Aoki. If you’re not familiar with Aoki, he’s the long-haired, goateed play-presser best known for riding over his audience in a rubber dinghy and throwing birthday cakes at them. He was also featured in a performance video alongside fellow DJs Sander van Doorn and Laidback Luke where the trio didn’t really do much of anything (see below).
It’s precisely these indefensible stage antics and seemingly ineffectual knob-twiddling that inspired Guardian reviewer Ian Gittins to eviscerate Aoki in his review of the DJ’s recent performance at London’s Brixton Academy. As Stoney Roads notes, it is both eloquent and utterly hilarious.
Whether or not you agree with the review, you have to appreciate its fantastic descriptions and Gittins’ sardonic take on EDM in general. Just before we get into it though, we would like to say that we’re big fans of Aoki’s work when he’s far, far away from the decks and busying himself with his legitimately awesome record label, Dim Mak.
“The dance music world is plagued by a second wave of superstar DJs and producers and Steve Aoki is firmly in the vanguard,” Gittins opens. “A cast-iron draw in the US, last year this indefatigable figure played close to 250 arena shows that netted him in excess of £15m.”
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According to Gittins, Aoki’s success is the result of “becoming a poster boy for EDM”, which he describes as “the subtlety-free strain of blitzkrieg techno marked by colon-rearranging bass and shrill, brutally effective stabs of rave synths” and which Aoki pitches “at a level of relentless faux-delirium”.
While we kind of have to fault Gittin for expecting subtlety at a Steve Aoki gig, we can’t get over his description of Aoki’s music: “Aoki’s brittle, cartoon trance is the club-music equivalent of a Michael Bay Hollywood blockbuster, all lowest-common-denominator action sequences and controlled explosions.”
“And if you ever wondered what ‘Smells Like Teen Spirit’, ‘Wonderwall’ or ‘Bohemian Rhapsody’ would sound like with thumping house beats ladled over them, Aoki is your man.” The reviewer then turns his cynical eye towards Aoki’s stage presence and infamous crowd interaction.
“While Aoki sporadically twiddles a few knobs, he certainly has plenty of time to indulge his voluminous repertoire of bone-headed gimmicks,” he writes. “These progress from striking a crucifixion pose atop the DJ deck to hurling cake into the willing faces of the front row to bouncing across the crowd’s heads in a rubber dinghy.”
“Like any irredeemably superficial artist, Aoki craves gravitas and credibility, and has earnestly vowed that his next studio album will be a more profound, deep-house affair,” Gittins concludes. “At 2am, watching him crowd-surf topless across a cake-bespattered moshpit, it is somehow difficult to believe.”
