Kaskade's new album aims to enchant the masses with sweet/tart trance
When the trance genre began to really break into dancefloor consciousness in the mid-to-late '90s, the sound was tuneful, pop-friendly, and lush. Breakthrough artists included BT, with his Ima album, Robert Miles, whose "Children" piano line resonates to this day, and ATB, whose club hit "9 PM" was simplistic and accessible. Their sound was, in fact, a halfway point between soul and technology.
The tidal changes on the beaches of clubland, from the almost innocent era of "Children" to the subsequent, fuck-faced madness of ecstasy-crazed Dutch trance, coincided with the times - the go-go expectations of the '90s, the dot-com burst of 2000, the bleak, drop-roll-and-snort excess of post-millennial clubland. After 9/11, dance music got dark, as dirty, percussive, tribal house swept the scene. Five years later, there's been a clear return to the more romantic sounds of the recent past. In fact, 35-year-old Kaskade is the hottest thing in dance music, and his flavor is as sweet and tart as fresh pineapple. Is it too soon?
"I'm not sure if my music really fits the times or not," says Kaskade, born Ryan Raddon. "Mine is a very kind of uplifting, artistic sound. Ninety-five percent of the dance music out there is mindless, more so than ever. Somewhere along the line, dance music has become more dance, and less music. What happened to playing songs - stuff that people can sing along to?"
With his September 26 major-distribution debut, Love Mysterious, the San Francisco house artist brings back that once-successful cross-fade of thumping underground beats and sing-along dreamscapes. Using looped guitars, ethereal synth pads, and crisp, clean percussion - not to mention angel-winged vocals (by contributors Marcus Bentley, Joslyn, and Becky Jean Williams) - Kaskade is one of the first contemporary house artists to really reach out to both the soul-aligned house nation and the candy-crazed trance generation.
"The album is more epic sounding, which is very much a trance thing, but I still feel it's a lot more organic," he says.
While trance artists such as Tiesto, Ferry Corsten, and Armin Van Buuren have been moving into house-pop territory, Kaskade has until recently been aligned more with West Coast vocal house artists such as Miguel Migs, Lisa Shaw, and Colette. Yet Love Mysterious sounds like it could be on the shelf next to the melodious trance of today and yesterday. On the Spanish-guitar-driven "In This Life," Joslyn sings, "So sweet, so fine/Sunshine" as copies of her voice, atomized, fly through the ether of your headspace. On "Sometimes," Bentley sings in a sultry, smooth voice over crunchy, Moroder-esque loops. "Never Ending" is a bass-line-driven ode to love.
"Part of the sound of this record was that I was on the road so much when I was writing it," Kaskade says. "I was on my laptop, using a lot more software synthesizers. When it came time to replace tracks with live musicians, I was, 'No, I'm digging more of a synthetic feel.'"
Kaskade says that younger trance kids give him props.
"One kid was like, 'Man, my favorite DJ is Tiesto, and you're No. 2,'" he says. "I've had girls coming to me saying they play my music for their mothers."
It's been a long, strange trip for Kaskade, indeed. A Chicago-raised Mormon, he went to college in Salt Lake City, where he started DJing and working in a vinyl shop. After graduation, he moved to San Francisco to pursue his dancefloor dreams and soon found himself in the enviable position of production assistant for the head of the West Coast's largest dance label, Om. The gig allowed him to make his own music on the side, and by 2003 he was putting out some of the label's best-selling music, including his debut, It's You It's Me. Last year, after shopping around a couple of fresh tracks, Kaskade inked a deal with the larger New York-based Ultra, which is distributed by Warner Music Group's Alternative Distribution Alliance. It means Kaskade has a chance to cross over with more than just trance and house kids.
"I had been with Om for five years, and I was ready to try something new," Kaskade says. "[Ultra has] a bigger machine and can get me out there more. It made me feel like, man, I have been truly blessed to be in the right place at the right time, and I have to take advantage of it."
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