I honestly didn’t see it coming. David Guetta? I figured he would have topped out at number 2 but I guess working with lots of commercial rap/r&b/pop singers will get you more votes. I hope this doesn’t start a bigger trend of more commercial music that we already have in our massively expanding dance music scene. Well congrats to David Guetta and cheers to Armin van Buuren for a great run!

Some notable movers: AVICII (up 33), Swedish House Mafia (up 13), Skrillex (debut at #19!), Arty (up 53), Martin Solveig (up 26), Calvin Harris (up 60), Noisecontrollers (up 55), W&W (up 36), Pete tha Zouk (up 44), Dada Life (up 38), Steve Aoki (debut at #42), Lange (down 29), Joachim Garraud (down 32), Simon Patterson (down 48), Felguk (debut at #87), James Zabiela (down 45), and Marcel Woods (down 32).

The top 100 DJ’s of 2011:

01. David Guetta (up 1)
02. Armin van Buuren (down 1)
03. Tiësto (non-mover)
04. Deadmau5 (non-mover)
05. Above & Beyond (non-mover)
06. Avicii (up 33)
07. Afrojack (up 12)
08. Dash Berlin (up 7 )
09. Markus Schulz (down 1)
10. Swedish House Mafia (up 13)
11. Paul van Dyk (down 5)
12. Axwell (down 2)
13. Gareth Emery (down 6)
14. Fedde Le Grand (up 5)
15. ATB (down 4)
16. Sander van Doorn (down 4)
17. Headhunterz (up 17)
18. Ferry Corsten (down 9)
19. Skrillex (BEST new entry)
20. Laidback Luke (down 3)
21. Infected Mushroom (down 8 )
22. Aly & Fila (down 2)
23. Steve Angello (down 9)
24. Hardwell (new entry)
25. Arty (up 53)
26. Sebastian Ingrosso (down 10)
27. Benny Benassi (down 1)
28. Daft Punk (up 16)
29. Martin Solveig (up 26)
30. Kaskade (up 5)
31. Carl Cox (down 9)
32. Chuckie (up 5)
33. Bob Sinclar (up 5)
34. Calvin Harris (up 60)
35. Noisecontrollers (up 55)
36. W&W (up 36)
37. Pete tha Zouk (up 44)
38. Dada Life (up 38)
39. Angerfist (new entry)
40. D Block & S Te Fan (up 33)
41. Coone (new entry)
42. Steve Aoki (new entry)
43. Cosmic Gate (down 19)
44. Bobina (down 19)
45. Richie Hawtin (down 14)
46. Eric Prydz (down 16)
47. Zatox (new entry)
48. tyDi (up 8 )
49. Orjan Nilsen (new entry)
50. Andy Moor (down 18)
51. Roger Shah (down 17)
52. John O’Callaghan (down 19)
53. Astrix (up 6)
54. Erick Morillo (down 6)
55. John Digweed (down 26)
56. Wolfgang Gartner (up 14)
57. DJ Feel (down 16)
58. Showtek (up 33)
59. Richard Durand (down 5)
60. Umek (down 10)
61. Skazi (up 22)
62. Paul Kalkbrenner (up 22)
63. Sasha (down 36)
64. Eddie Halliwell (down 17)
65. Moonbeam (down 23)
66. Myon & Shane 54 (down 4)
67. Judge Jules (down 23)
68. Matt Darey (down 16)
69. Paul Oakenfold (down 18)
70. Alesso (new entry)
71. Mark Knight (down 18)
72. Sean Tyas (down 26)
73. Mat Zo (down 7)
74. Lange (down 29)
75. Joachim Garraud (down 32)
76. Simon Patterson (down 48)
77. Francis Davila (new entry)
78. Psyko Punkz (new entry)
79. Dimitri Vegas & Like Mike (new entry)
80. Wildstylez (new entry)
81. Roger Sanchez (down 17)
82. Hernan Cattaneo (down 25)
83. Tritonal (new entry)
84. DJ Vibe (up 16)
85. AN21 (new entry)
86. Bloody Beetroots (non-mover)
87. Felguk (new entry)
88. Nero (new entry)
89. Juanjo Martin (new entry)
90. Boy George (down 10)
91. Tenishia (new entry)
92. Sidney Samson (new entry)
93. Dirty South (down 18)
94. James Zabiela (down 45)
95. Marcel Woods (down 32)
96. Porter Robinson (new entry)
97. Sven Väth (down 39)
98. Brennan Heart (new entry)
99. Leon Bolier (down 31)
100. Boys Noize (down 28)

Related posts:

1. DJ Mag Top 100 for 2009
2. 2009 Trance Awards Winners

From an LA Times Article:
If time-lapse photos existed to illustrate the movements of the crowd during the first two nights of the Electric Daisy Carnival this past weekend at the Las Vegas Motor Speedway, a bird’s-eye view would show clusters of human ants, an estimated 80,000 for each of the three days of the annual electronic music festival, moving in packs within the grounds of the 1,200-acre complex as if by mysterious force.

Zoom in, and patterns would begin to emerge. Within the facility’s 1.5-mile oval track, home on most weekends to racing events like the Kobalt Tools 400, thousands of bobbing heads gathered in darkness around five booming, crystal clear sound systems, bouncing among carnival rides and strobing lights to the sounds of some of the world’s most popular DJs — including Benny Benassi, DJ Tiësto, David Guetta, Swedish House Mafia, and Skrillex — and some of the genre’s most innovative and forward-thinking masterminds, such as Richie Hawtin, Green Velvet and Rusko.

Focus on just one of the event’s many stages — Guetta’s 1:30 a.m. Sunday set — and witness party trains snaking through the crowd, rolling in time to a 128-beat-per-minute metronomic thump. Notice one fivesome, holding hands; boys musclebound and shirtless; bikini-top girls wearing matching panties that say “booty” on the bottom; faces lost in music; Mona Lisa smiles.

Welcome to the first Sin City installment of the biggest dance music festival in America, one that seems to have found its natural home in Nevada. Previous West Coast versions of the Daisy Carnival have taken place at the L.A. Memorial Coliseum in downtown Los Angeles, but partly as a result of last summer’s death of a 15-year-old girl who had attended the party and the ensuing scrutiny, the company that produced the 14 previous events, Insomnia, moved the carnival to the biggest, most secure outdoor space in Vegas. If there’s one city that can handle this crowd, it’s Vegas, whose public safety officers deal with adrenaline addicts all day, every day.

The scale was massive: a dance party as county fair, with Ferris wheels, a funhouse and many swirling spinning devices.

You could find corn dogs and hamburgers, lemonade and beer. From a proper distance (and with earplugs in), one could imagine it was REO Speedwagon and LeAnn Rimes sharing the showbill.

But EDC draws a subculture that has little overlap with NASCAR dads, even if their children are no doubt here in droves: teenagers and twentysomethings in love with house music and all its myriad forms, swollen with energy and desire. It’s a demographic that the Vegas casinos are chasing hard these days. Many of the weekend’s headliners are resident DJs at clubs along the Strip; and at the city’s hottest new hotel, the Cosmopolitan, gamblers shoot craps while the casino-wide sound system shuffles a playlist that includes Radiohead, Talking Heads and Hot Chip.

And yet, more than two decades after rave culture first sprouted in England, participants have come to accept that their particular passion for electronic music and gathering outdoors in a large, communal mass to dance all night long still confuses and frightens parents reared on the guitar and not the sampler/computer. It continues to be the sonic crux of a generation gap.

The DJs that performed here are ruling the pop charts in 2011: Italian DJ Benny Benassi’s collaboration with Chris Brown, “Beautiful People,” was a top 10 smash, and Frenchman Guetta’s “Love Is Gone” had thousands screaming every word on Saturday night. DJ Tiësto makes as much money as a pop star. But not having risen out of rock ‘n’ roll, or country, blues, or classic pop music, the notion of gathering large volumes of people to watch DJs throw their hands in the air doesn’t really register with the verse-chorus-verse crowd or the media seeking to understand the allure.

There were two fatalities at the rock-oriented Bonnaroo music festival this month, but this news was greeted with relative indifference and little fear-mongering. News of two deaths at the Dallas installment of EDC in early June, however, was treated much more ominously, as though there were trouble lurking inside the music and the structure of its presentation rather than inside every curious teenager faced with the temptation of experimenting with illegal drugs, be it an organic fungus or a synthetic drop of Ecstasy.

Ecstasy? It’s a word whose original meaning gets eclipsed by its pharmaceutical one. But ecstasy was everywhere at Electric Daisy Carnival, the kind created by — zoom in further, into the mind — firing neurons racing in the region of the brain devoted to reward, motivation and arousal, where naturally occurring opioids fill the pleasure centers, whether you’re on drugs or not.

Specifically, it happened on Saturday night at a stage called the Circuit Grounds, where Chicago house innovator Green Velvet dropped a rich, dynamic set of minimal beat music that contained not only sophisticated experiments in Steve Reich-ian rhythmic phasing but also a relentlessly hypnotic roller coaster of sound. Later at the same stage, Detroit techno producer Jon Gaiser crafted a mathematically precise weave of beats, each placed in the proper spot as if by tweezers and microscope, combined to create an intricate code of sound.

He was followed by Richie Hawtin, who, it could be argued, invented the minimal house template (Hawtin’s “Spastik” was sampled throughout the weekend, as was Green Velvet’s work), and offered a generous, bass-heavy blend of aural drips and drops that sounded like the last few moments of a spring rainstorm.

Across the speedway at the Basspod, L.A.-based producer/DJ Rusko pushed his innovative dub-step beats. The night prior, Skream and Benga, two-thirds of the dub-step “supergroup” Magnetic Man, offered innards-rumbling stutter-step beats.

But it was Skrillex’s packed 3:30 a.m. slot at the Neon Garden that remains stamped in the memory, even if that’s partly because of the size of the sonic hammer that the L.A. born and bred DJ used: The artist born as Sonny Moore crafts monstrous, bass-heavy sounds that rip out of the speakers. Harsh digital skids collide with deconstructed vocal phrases, the most memorable of which was his complete destruction of British singer La Roux’s “In for the Kill.” He chopped words in half, carved them into syllabic snippets that stuttered frantically. It was abrasive and absolutely unsubtle.

The La Roux mix was one of an entire collage of sonic samples over the weekend, one that connected past and present in fascinating ways: the music and voices from the Big Bopper, Adele, Henry Rollins, the Clash, Nirvana, the Ramayana monkey chant, and hundreds more weaved through the music.

Combined with lasers and lights, the gymnasts on trampolines, the spinning sounds and the overall feeling of … Las Vegas, Electric Daisy Carnival proved not only a production success but quite possibly a portent. As of press time Sunday night, the Las Vegas Police Department had reported only minor problems. (Sunday night’s closing roster took place too late for print.)

Music, dance, dopamine and lots of shiny, sparkly things: the foundation upon which Vegas was built. As one generation cedes pop culture control to the next, could a Rave du Soleil be too far behind?

randall.roberts@latimes.com
Copyright © 2011, Los Angeles Times

via: LA TIMES

Related posts:

1. Tickets to the 16th Annual Electric Daisy Carnival, Held in Las Vegas Sold Out
2. EDC 2012 Announced – Las Vegas

Amsterdam Dance Event

The Amsterdam Dance Event is now officially the biggest club festival in the world, with over 700 DJs playing in 40 different venues across Amsterdam. The total audience last year was 72,000, and this year there are an extra six venues.

A preview of the lineup has just been released, with all the big names playing, including: Armin Van Buuren, David Guetta, Erick Morillo, John Dahlbäck, Markus Schulz, Paul van Dyk, Sven Väth.

Ticket information isn’t available yet, but the festival is not far away, taking place on the 22/23/24/25th October. There are also a few ‘unplanned’ afterparties the night after for those that can handle it…

Related posts:

1. 2011 DJ Mag Top 100 DJ List Winners
2. DJ Mag Top 100 (+50) for 2008

Armin Van Buuren is number one in this year’s DJ Magazine Top 100 DJ Poll.

I think everyone knew it was only a matter of time before Armin took the top spot as Top 100 DJ Poll.

Van Buuren has earned the title this year, with all of his top charting tracks and remixes as well as his incredibly popular A State of Trance radio show which is broadcast on 40 stations around the world.

Left behind were a handful of the biggest names dance music has to offer, including Tiesto, John Digweed, Paul Van Dyk, Sasha and Oakenfold.

Notable movers this year are: Justice, Infected Mushroom, Booka Shade, David Guetta, Sander van Doorn, James Zabiela, Freddy le Grand, and Eric Prydz.

Here’s the rest of the TOP 100:

1 Armin Van Buuren
2 Tiesto
3 John Digweed
4 Paul Van Dyk
5 Sasha
6 Above & Beyond
7 Carl Cox
8 Ferry Corsten
9 Infected Mushroom
10 David Guetta
11 Deep Dish
12 Paul Oakenfold
13 Markus Schulz
14 Hernan Cattaneo
15 Sander Van Doorn
16 Eddie Halliwell
17 James Zabiela
18 Astrix
19 Richie Hawtin
20 Marco V
21 Judge Jules
22 Fedde Le Grand
23 Gabriel & Dresden
24 Erick Morillo
25 Roger Sanchez
26 ATB
27 Sven Vath
28 Yahel
29 Umek
30 Andy Moor
31 Gareth Emery
32 Benny Benassi
33 Axwell
34 Mauro Picotto
35 Sander Kleinenberg
36 Eric Prydz
37 Blank & Jones
38 Bad Boy Bill
39 Pete Tong
40 DJ Vibe
41 Tiga
42 Steve Lawler
43 Danny Tenaglia
44 Ronski Speed
45 Nic Fanciulli
46 Steve Angello
47 Nick Warren
48 Matt Hardwick
49 Ricardo Villalobos
50 James Holden
51 Mark Knight
52 The Thrillseekers
53 Marco Bailey
54 Anderson Noise
55 Lange
56 Offer Nissim
57 Kyau and Albert
58 Justice
59 Matt Darey
60 Timo Maas
61 Danny Howells
62 Menno De Jong
63 Bob Sinclar
64 John Acquaviva
65 Agnelli & Nelson
66 Fatboy Slim
67 Andy C
68 Ricky Stone
69 Donald Glaude
70 Desyn Masiello
71 Daft Punk
72 Martin Solveig
73 BT
74 Chris Liebing
75 Valentino Kanzyani
76 Trentemoller
77 Jeff Mills
78 John Graham
79 Robbie Rivera
80 Chemical Brothers
81 Luciano
82 Hype
83 Lisa Lashes
84 Filo and Pero
85 Lee Burridge
86 Armand Van Helden
87 Magda
88 Dave Seaman
89 Victor Calderone
90 Dave Clarke
91 Richard Durand
92 Westbam
93 Sebastien Leger
94 Chus and Ceballos
95 Wally Lopez
96 Booka Shade
97 Adam Beyer
98 Dirty South
99 Erol Alkan
100 Laurent Garnier

via: DJ Mag Official Announcement

Related posts:

1. Dance Music News : LA Dance Under Siege, iPad DJ, Tiesto Lives!