There’s something to be said for understated house music. No matter if a name is attached to a track or the DJ doing the mixing, a low-key set that starts slow and minimal and gradually builds momentum communicates a higher level of skill: a DJ who doesn’t lay out all of his tricks in the first 10 minutes, and instead leads listeners and...

Some artists are trendsetters and others followers. In the current musical climate of EDM, Avicii is turning into the former, a formidable force of hummable piano lines and uplifting house tracks that fill a dance floor and become an anthem even before he headlines his next festival. But with careers shooting up the DJ Mag list as fast as...

What’s house? What’s trance? We’re clearly entering a new era of electronic dance music, one in which both commercial and independent artists see no genre bounds. The melodic, arpeggiated melodies of trance music meld with the hard, march-like beats of house. The instability of dubstep’s wavering bass adds a much-needed breakdown to...

Who is Gemini? The 22-year-old producer and songwriter born Thomas Slinger attempts to define himself on this short, five-track EP that includes two of his larger singles, “3D Romeo” and “Freedom.” The Mercury EP, out on November 19, assembles a collection of vignettes, each exploring a different and divergent facet of electronic music. The...

Long time EDM duo, The Orb, has gone through many transformations in its near-twenty year existence, resulting is an unlikely but surprisingly tasteful mixture of the deepest of the German underground scene and the heaviest of old school hip-hop. In its current incarnation, Dr. Alex Paterson and Thomas Felhman make up the duo, and in their...