Recently named the #1 American DJ by DJ Mag, Kaskade enters his tenth year as a producer of electronic music albums, and releases his eighth LP, Atmosphere, via Ultra Records. So while many are chasing after the American EDM dream, the opposite is true for Kaskade; it follows him.
That being said, Kaskade is one of the few producers in the genre that can say he has eight albums to his name, while many hardly even have one. He’s always blazed his own trails, so the surge of popularity his genre is currently receiving is almost a due reward for staying true to his craft all of these years.
The title track, Atmosphere, has all the makings of a hit record, including Kaskade – for the first time – taking on the vocal reigns himself. Couple that with a big, almost “Swedish” drop, “Atmosphere”, in all it’s catchiness, seems like the type of track that could take Kaskade from respectable house DJ to Calvin Harris-level superstar.
But Kaskade does not attempt to pander to the Def Jam roster or the Billboard chart list to make an album of radio-ready hits. The material on Atmosphere is better suited for the hours spent outside of a club or festival, which will likely make it’s inevitable club-mashups and remixes that more enjoyable when heard in his DJ sets for the first time. Case in point is the melodic ballad, “No One Knows Who We Are” (feat. LIGHTS), which fares better here in it’s pared down version, than in it’s previous released Swanky Tunes incarnation. It will be interesting and likely equally rewarding to see how he re-imagines standouts like the alt-rock driven “Something Something” or “How It Is” for the big room.
Kaskade goes back to his humble beginnings at acid jazz / trip hop label OM Records, on a series of “airport” themed instrumental interludes such as “LAX to JFK” and “SFO To ORD”. Tracks like these resurrect the forgotten downtempo genre and are likely to excite the lost URB Magazine reader in all of us.
Atmosphere is a bold offering from Kaskade, one that doesn’t attempt to adapt to the “now sound” of house music, nor does he try to create an album of marketable singles like many of his peers. He is proof positive that slow and steady wins the race.