“That was weird!”
These are the first words Style of Eye yells into my ear immediately after ceding control of the decks to Jack Beats at a packed and newly minted Create Nightclub in Hollywood last Saturday. “Weird like how?” I asked. “If I knew Jamie Jones was going on later,” he says, “I’d have played a deeper set!”
Even Niall Dailly, one half of Jack Beats, felt it. “I’m just going to follow up what he (Style of Eye) is doing, then go deep so Jamie can take over,” Dailly said when I asked him what he had planned for his set. In dance music’s version of the game “one-of-these-things-is-not-like-the-other”, it’s clear who the outlier is among Skrillex’s OWSLA all-stars Jack Beats, Dance Music’s genre smashing scientist-in-residence Style of Eye, and Jamie Jones, the deep house wonderkid who reps the inimitable Hot Creations record label and lists London AND Ibiza as his home town. But what exactly is weird about it?
The most interesting Dance Music event in L.A. over Memorial Day weekend was the result of a fluke scheduling error in San Diego and the foresight of Create’s talent booker to scoop Jamie Jones up and put him on the bill alongside some bass and synth heavy-hitters. Style of Eye did in fact turn the crowd upside down with a hard as nails electro set that included a fair dose of Hard House and a trap breakdown so smooth you could cut it with a butter knife. He was just off the plane from playing the first ever EDC Chicago, and it was clear by the way he moved that the adrenaline from the rager in the windy city had yet to wear off. But the crowd, half of which was primed for an all out face-melt and the other half craving the healing powers of Jamie Jones and his gospel of deep house, seemed to find a new level of dance music euphoria in the combination of both. In this case, weird worked!
Linus Eklow, who has made a career of experimenting with different “styles” of dance music, is a pro at reading a crowd. His latest release “After Dark”, which he produced in collaboration with Tom Star, is a festival favorite around the world and speaks to his desire to hit the mainstream tour circuit hard. But his imagination is much more expansive, and that unbridled energy comes through in tracks like his 2010 release with Magnus The Magnus, “Antidote”, or “Horse” from his Duck, Cover & Hold album. His quiver is full, and his aim is sharp. So this weirdness wasn’t the result of some inability to meet the demands of a diverse crowd. It was something else. In an industry susceptible to becoming too pre-programmed, genrefied, commoditized, and stuck in the status quo, Linus Eklow is the right amount of weird to keep this party going strong.
