Thank you for taking the time to talk with ElectroJams, we’re looking forward to seeing what unfolds live!

Yeah me too, I’m really looking forward to it too!

I know you grew up in SoCal and have a strong punk rock background, how does that influence your music and your shows?

You know you can’t take your roots away from what you’re doing. I grew up going to hardcore/punk shows. Like that was my life. Going to shows, being in bands, being in that community. One of the things I take away from those shows, that I remember, is the energy from the crowd and the interaction.

What was it like finally releasing Wonderland? What do you have next for us?

Um, yeah so, we’re still in mid-swing with the album. Like we have the video for Control Freak coming out soon, and remixes from people like Dillon Francis. And then Emergency is my next song with Lil’ Jon and Chiddy bang; and we shot a crazy video for that one. And like a sick remix package with Laidback Luke and a bunch of other guys that crushed the remixes. I just also shot a video for a hardcore song that I did, “The Kids Will Have Their Say” with the guitarist from The Exploited. It’s a lot of…like with this album, it’s a step forward with Ultra. I wanted to do videos that rock, as many as 10 out of the 13 songs. It’s still mid-swing and pushing these songs off the album; and also putting out new music, like I just released “Beatdown” which is my new song with Iggy Azalea. My collaboration with Knife Party should be coming out soon on Dim Mak, as well as dropped a free remix on my Facebook page of Girls Generation that I just finished earlier in the year. And then obviously, my most commercial remix is the one with the band we will be performing with next week.

What band is it going to be? [Editor’s Note: It turned out to be Duran Duran and their track, “Hungry Like The Wolf”]

I can’t announce that, um it’s a surprise. It’s a surprise. It’s definitively one of my most pressured remixes I’ve done in a long time. Because I grew up this band; Watching videos of this band I grew up with this song , so I wanted to make a remix of this song that I could not only play out, but also play with the band which I intended to at the show. So it’s an interesting production, it’s an interesting remix that I was able to do.

How do you balance being chief at Dim Mak and still pursue your own career?

Well at Dim Mak we have 18 full time staff working for our small company. And there’s a lot of compartmentalization you know, like we have marketing department an art department, and a business side, a royalty side, a new media side. A lot of compartmentalization. From what it was in back ‘96 or when I got my first employee in 2003, to now 2012 it’s just evolved so far. My role at the company is more or less A&R, signing artists, and being at the initial stages of any concepts for any of our artists, like marketing for instance. So for the most part on the day-to-day, I have an incredible staff running Dim Mak back in LA. It’s like, all these business I am able to do outside of my own productions and career as an artist, it’s all about having the right team in the place to manage all the different operations and without them there is no operation, no business. I owe a lot of it to these people.

It’s good to hear someone acknowledge the team.

Definitely.

The last few years, American EDM has grown from a relatively underground scene to a massive multi-billion dollar industry, that includes monstrous festivals, cross-genre hits, and it has essentially been repackaged for mass consumption…how do you think this will ultimately affect EDM’s future and growth?

Well you know, EDM is big everywhere. It’s big in Europe, it’s big in Asia, it’s underground but it’s growing and growing. But what I’m seeing with the American EDM scene, is different than any other place. I see similarities in that it is youth-driven, and they are putting the passion behind it. That’s why it’s become so huge. The feeling I’m getting at EDC is that youthful, passionate that you don’t get in other countries. It’s part of the culture in other countries, for so long, where you see kids whose parents we’re in the scene. Whereas here, it’s just different. And I think in the end, EDM by definition is what it is. Dance music. It’s not radio music. There might be a few records that might seep through because of the vocals, like Rihanna on a record or a David Guetta record. Now as far as what 95% of what EDM is, it’s all about the actual music side of things. For that main reason, those songs aren’t made for the radio. The radio is meant for pop vocalists. So, I think that the future of EDM, no matter how big it’s getting in America, how big the underground gets, it will always be authentic. There will be a few records in the mainstream, but for the most part there are so many different kinds/genres that you can’t identify five songs that can make it to the radio.

You said there are a lot of different sounds that don’t make it to the radio, what are some of your favorite subgenres/artists out there that won’t/haven’t made it to the radio? Something maybe that the average American wouldn’t know?

If you want to talk about what’s really popular in America, like dubstep or bass music in general; that is a kind of music that you will get samplings of. You’ll get dubstep bass sounds in radio songs, but at the end those aren’t dubstep records on the radio. Take Skrillex for example, he’s a perfect example that bypassed radio entirely and created his own lane of music. He has created his own genre of music. He skipped major institutions and past manufactured stars and didn’t use their formula. He just created his own sound, and when you’re not sourcing it through the radio but the Internet, which is open-source for everyone and decentralized, it’s changed how we listen to music forever. You don’t need to listen to the radio to find music, you can find it anywhere. Skrillex is a perfect example and blew past everyone. He showed that you don’t need the major players to make an impact on popular culture.

So last weekend at EDC you decided to brave the winds and still put on your set, what was that like?

I was disappointed I couldn’t do my show. I’ve been planning with the Blue Man Group (BMG) for over 6 months. I had been rehearsing on stage with them all week. The way I was looking at the show was like a play. Each song was part of a huge long play we were doing to my music. It was just epic to work with BMG, a group like this and reenact like how I visualize what it should look like to my music. It was just really sad. So when we got there and there was no music, we were like what the fuck? That was weird at first, and then I was just like how is this possible? Thousands of people exiting this one area, and so we’re all standing around scratching our head thinking what’s going to happen. So we’re sitting around, asking questions, and a couple hours, I said I had to go express myself and play my set. So I started going around, and saw the thousands of people leaving and it was gutting. Then I found a golf cart and put a Bloody Beetroots sweater over my head so no one could see me, and I was like going through and realizing a lot of people are still here but all the stages we’re closed. I saw they were putting sound on the art carts, so I just was like ‘I’ll play up here, I’m here’. I have enough fans that hid from getting kicked out and this is the least I could do. So Markus Schulz was on, and they said I could get on. So I said I had my cakes, my boats here and didn’t want to waste these things. We spent all this money to bring this stuff out here, and didn’t want to waste.

Can you tell us a little about the cakes? How did that come up?

It was really me tying into Dim Mak artist AutoErotiques’ single “Turn Up The Volume”, and in the video there are these exploding cakes. They explode on people’s faces. It went viral and so we were pleased with that and with AutoErotique, two up and coming guys. So I used to play the song out and the video would come up in my head. I experimented by making a cake and putting AutoErotique and Turn Up The Volume on the cake, and I bring a video guy to every show. So I was like ‘yo yo check this out, I’m going to play this song and throw it at someone. ‘ So we put that video up and it went viral. So I just kept doing it. I did it for 6 months, and then had to retire the song, but couldn’t retire the cakes so I just started writing Dim Mak on the cakes. And then now it’s just part of the show. At the end of the day though, I don’t like to talk about the caking because I want it to be a special thing for the show so these kids that are up front. They are crushed against the barricade, needing water. They want to have fun. I’m only going to cake people who want to have fun and have it.

Well I know that’s all the time we have but thank you for your time!

Awesome Jake, thank you!

Born and raised in NYC, a full-time student in the Towson/Baltimore, I’ve had a wealth of experience in electronic music. I’ve DJ’d parties and on the radio, and am an aficionado all things Electronic Music with a passion for art in general. If you have any questions, concerns, comments, you can email me with inquiries and demos at 808sJake@gmail.com And you can follow me on twitter! @808sJake Follow my music taste on last.fm too! http://www.last.fm/user/Jake0617 doandroidsdance.com