Steve Aoki
Steve Aoki
Steven Hiroyuki "Steve" Aokiis an American electro house musician, record producer, and music executive. In 2012, Pollstar designated Aoki as the highest grossing dance artist in North America from tours. He has collaborated with producers and vocalists such as will.i.am, Afrojack, LMFAO, Iggy Azalea, Lil Jon, and Laidback Luke, and is known for his remixes of artists such as Kid Cudi...
NationalityAmerican
ProfessionMusic Producer
Date of Birth30 November 1977
CityMiami, FL
CountryUnited States of America
Vegas is a very fickle market that's about fun. It will change to what people want.
There's a big gaping hole in the EDM space for songwriting. It's one thing to learn how to be a great sound designer and become big just on sound design. Especially if you're in the dubstep category, it's like, how much fatter and more interesting can you make those drops.
I wasn't sheltered or spoiled. All the money I made, I made myself.
My favorite book is 'A Short History of Nearly Everything' by Bill Bryson.
I've been doing my record label for 15 years called Dim Mak. I started my label when I was 19 in '96. I started putting out an eclectic roster of artists. In 2003, we found a band called Bloc Party, and in 2004, we started getting remixes for Bloc Party, and at the same time I was throwing Dim Mak parties in Los Angeles.
The ephemeral part of this work is that in music production, the sounds evolve so much faster than it used to, which means that you really have to put in a lot of work and effort in constantly designing the next sound that will move the culture forward.
Dance music is an emotional journey. It's how well you can make people feel something that they haven't felt.
No matter what I do, I can't help but feel that I'm under a microscope. Some of it is completely silly, and some of it is meant to be hurtful. For example, a website accumulated all of my music videos to point out perceived Illuminati images. I loved that one. Of course, it was all ridiculous but funny.
To come out here and play on Woodstock grounds, first year ever headlining on the main stage there's nothing more iconic. [Mysteryland] is one of those festivals that holds down the legacy of dance music it's been around for so many years. It's been part of what we do for so long. It kinda makes sense to bring the tradition over here to America. The festival grounds of Woodstock, that's pretty epic.
Grateful to The Kerry Gaynor Method for saving my manager's life. He quit smoking thanks to their genius Method.
I have been doing merch' since I was 15 and in bands when I was a teenager - silk-screening shirts, making the emulsion in my mom's closet I converted into a dark room, through college. That's essentially how us bands survived was selling homemade t-shirts.
'Boneless,' even though we were thinking about servicing it to radio, it made more sense putting a vocal on there. This was actually the first time that I really looked at doing a song for radio and kind of let go of some control and listened to a lot of different radio pluggers and had Ultra come in and help out with ideas.
My life, I swear, is, like, 75% public. I have a very small percentage of my life that is private. But I do keep that private life private.
'Neon Future' is, in short, a positive outlook on human progress and technology, looking forward to a bright, colorful utopia. It's embracing the future and looking toward the future in a more optimistic way.