Yesterday morning, Carnage sent out the following tweet.
TBH…. ever since Tim passed away there hasn’t been any djs taking risks to push dance music forward…. all same shit everywhere… shit is sad… Guetta & Morten the only ones trying something new
— CARNAGE (@djcarnage) February 3, 2021
Predictably, this incensed a lot of people. Particularly among groups of people whose passion it is to find underground, underappreciated, unknown artists, the take came across as shallow and diminished Carnage’s reputation as a tastemaker — at least initially.
this is the PERFECT example of how shitty the edm bubble is and how hard these big artist dont try to Innovative artist because they only care about the big ones like themselves
sad sad sad https://t.co/tzlDPmiLAU
— YUNG VRO (@BlvkSheepMusic) February 4, 2021
and shows a complete disregard for the literal ten of thousands of hardworking talented kids who are pushing boundaries every day. innovation won’t always personally text u, u sometimes maybe gotta look for it
— CYCLOPS RECORDINGS STAN ACCOUNT (@Subtronics) February 3, 2021
this is an interesting way to let everyone know that you don’t even listen to music
— chet porter (@chetporter) February 3, 2021
as wonderful as Avicii is, this tweet screams tone deaf. this tweet is a sign to everyone who even had the slightest idea to attend your live shows post-COVID that you’re not gonna play anything interesting and it’s not worth their time attending. thanks for the heads up!
— Moore Kismet
(@MooreKismetBass) February 3, 2021
Literally 100s if not 1000s of innovative electronic artists: Am I a joke to you?
Carnage: Yes—
Oliver Heldens
(@OliverHeldens) February 4, 2021
Five hours later, Carnage would tweet again to say that he only shared his thoughts after going through his own demo email, which isn’t exactly a great barometer of forward-thinking music; when you’re a mainstream artist, people tend to send you mainstream content.
I made that tweet after listening thru 600+ demos I’ve received in my promo email… 90% of them were all the same shit… the ratio of people trying new things is sooooo offf…
— CARNAGE (@djcarnage) February 4, 2021
He continued…
Ofcourse there’s artist out there doing some fire shit….but not enough…..
— CARNAGE (@djcarnage) February 4, 2021
And more established djs need to be doing the same… take the risks… stop listening to your managers or agents… listen to your heart and go crazy!!!
— CARNAGE (@djcarnage) February 4, 2021
ATLIENS, Whipped cream, hekler, apache, gravedgr, salvatore ganacci, Morten,Marauda, rinzen, lit lords, side piece, sudden death,valentino,4b, riot ten, must die…. they making
— CARNAGE (@djcarnage) February 4, 2021
Whether these tweets are backpedaling or not (they appear to be), we’re not here to put words in Carnage’s mouth.
In the end, it all resulted in a long IG Live wherein Carnage spoke with a variety of producers and tastemakers, including Moore Kismet, Subtronics, and Insomniac CEO Pasquale Rotella. For a lot of people, it wasn’t much better than his tweets.
carnage has said “take a risk” over 500 times in this live.
pasquale says “well who took a risk for you? lots of younger kids are getting real funky.”
carnage: “the chainsmokers. they put singing on edm.”
— josh pan (@joshpan) February 4, 2021
Carnage on IG live rn talking about how all music sounds the same today when u go to festivals. that isn’t artists’ fault for not taking risks, it’s promoters’ and agents’ fault for not booking innovative artists & booking the same lineups EVERY single year cuz it’s a safe bet
— Litty Kitty (@HexCougar) February 4, 2021
At the end of the day, the whole conversation likely did nothing to sway haters or supporters of Carnage either way.
The bottom line is that 1) there are innovative producers at every level, it just takes a little digging to get there; and 2) there does need to be more innovation at the top and less incentive to rest on their laurels. Hex Cougar’s tweet (above) pretty much hits the nail on the head by shifting (at least some of) the responsibility to promoters for not booking up and coming artists and going for the easy buck.
But as we’ve seen with Your EDM’s own content, as well, there needs to be an all-around shift to make any sort of formative change. If there’s anything to take from yesterday’s whole interaction, it’s that at least a few artists got some new fans.
Photo via Rukes.com
This article was first published on Your EDM. Source: Breaking Down Carnage’s Inflammatory “DJs Taking Risks” Tweet