DJ Life

“Do you ever feel trapped by fame?”
The question rings out in the small alcove in which DJ Mag is perched next to Martin Garrix. The Dutch DJ and this year’s Top 100 winner pauses momentarily to reflect. “Trapped? No...” he replies, cautiously. “But I do feel a great sense of responsibility. I feel like I can't do stupid shit. I don't want to be a bad role model, I don't want to set a bad example. That’s very important to me.”
It’s a refreshingly grounded view from one of the globe’s most famous youngsters. Martin Garrix shot to stardom in 2013 thanks to his hit electronic track, ‘Animals’, that he produced aged 16 in his bedroom. ‘Animals’ has been viewed an unfathomable 900,000,000 times on YouTube, while Garrix has amassed a social media following bigger than the entire population of The Netherlands. That's 13 million Facebook likes, 8.1 million Instagram followers and 3.4 million Twitter fans — to be exact.
Signed to EDM hit-factory Spinnin' Records for much of his teens, before a widely publicised bust-up over the ownership rights to his music, 2016 is Garrix’s coming-of-age moment. He launched his own imprint, STMPD RCRDS, back in January (with the backing of major label powerhouse Sony), releasing future bass burner ‘In The Name Of Love’ with Bebe Rexha on the imprint in September. It was a subtle shift away from the big room club sound that made ‘Animals’ the anthem of the EDM generation — a sign that Garrix, like any normal teenager, was growing up.
But it’s outside the realm of chart-topping Beatport singles, stadium shows and Ibiza residencies, and away from the private jets and expensive sneakers, that the real secret of Martin Garrix’s appeal lies. A mix of talent, timing, marketing and star quality has allowed a humble, bright-eyed kid from the small town of Amstelveen to become the world's biggest DJ — the embodiment of ultimate possibility for bedroom producers around the globe. The Martin Garrix story is — literally — what teenage dreams are made of.
 

In just over a year, Marshmello has gone from bedroom unknown to worldwide star. It was only March 2015 that he uploaded his first song ‘WaVeZ’ to Soundcloud, but it soon turned heads with its popping trap production, wild sub-bass and cut-up vocal samples. More tracks followed and continued to fuse so-called future bass and future house with prog and trap, and eventually maximalist dance star Skrillex re-posted one of them on his SoundCloud page — from then on, Marshmello has been in sharp ascendency.
January this year brought a self-released debut album, ‘Joytime’, which packed a real punch across ten tracks on his own Joytime Collective label. It immediately climbed up the iTunes charts and spawned singles ‘Keep It Mello’ with rapper Omar LinX and ‘Want U 2’. High-profile headline slots at festivals around the States ensued, with one appearance at Electric Daisy Carnival seeing Tiesto pretend to unveil himself, live on stage, as the then-unknown Marshmello.
It was later disregarded as a publicity stunt when the two were photographed — both wearing helmets — back-stage. Only recently did the world finally work out who Marshmello really was when Skrillex unwittingly gave up his identity via a post on social media.
We now know the project to be the work of American DJ Chris Comstock, also known as Dotcom. His preference for anonymity probably explains why “the rest of the questions aren’t really questions we’d like to answer” when asked by DJ Mag for comment on the last year. What we do know, thanks to a Twitter announcement, is that Marshmello will play the Ritual Tour and will play in several countries including the United States, China, South Korea, India and Paraguay between now and the end of January next year.




The Chainsmokers are a couple of self-described “frat bros” with a penchant for producing chart-topping singles and delivering stadium-rousing DJ shows. And when we say chart-topping singles, we mean it. To date their music has been streamed 1.5 billion times. A staggering amount. And they’ve done it largely by collaborating with guest vocalists.
The Chainsmokers are Alex Pall and Drew Taggart and they have tapped into a streaming generation that’s looking for something a little bit more meaningful than one-dimensional EDM. Their tracks are full of emotion, shiny melodies, incredibly hooky vocals, and then festooned with all the trappings of the latest buzz genres — be it trap, future bass or dubstep.
They’re a strangely conflicted duo, though. On the one hand they’re happy to poke fun at dance music with 2014’s massively annoying, yet cleverly satirical, ‘#SELFIE’. But now they’re making tracks about feels, especially so with their latest, ‘All We Know’, featuring hotly-tipped vocalist Phoebe Ryan. Despite this strange dichotomy, it’s working for them — the duo are as popular as they’ve ever been, as evidenced by their reappearance in the Top 100 this year, they’ve yet to release an album, and they’ve just made the front cover of Billboard Magazine.
Their track ‘Closer’ featuring Halsey is set to be one of the most successful tracks of 2016. And from afar it’s because they’ve made good decisions; the double threat of using lyric videos, and choosing really compelling guest vocalists, have all been really good ideas. ‘#SELFIE’ was in the past. They really seem to know what they’re doing now. If pop superstardom is what they want, they’re in the fast lane, and when it’s happening to a couple of frat bros with plenty of New Yoik swagger it’s going to be an entertaining ride.