“I pretty much feel like I’m gonna die.” Said Kari Lambou, jerking his head at the last minute before he was to make an impromptu pillow out of his MacBook Pro. Kari’s the head of Trauma Live, who are embarking on a 7 city North American music tour. Any music tour is tough, but Kari is pushing North America’s first hardcore E.D.M. tour (purists would call it hardcore techno), undoubtedly the least popular subgenre of the EDM world. The genre is squarely a mix of house music, hip hop, punk rock, heavy metal, and industrial noise. It’s as old-school ravey as it gets, and despite its detractors, it refuses to vanish. Mixed into the chaos is hardcore’s younger, cuter and more popular little brothers in music, hardstyle and rawstyle, to make sure the crowd is comfortable with the rock hard beats-per-minute.
Kari’s been up for a few days with limited sleep and the comfort of a few complimentary beers doled out by his office workspace in El Segundo, CA. There are numerous causes of his sleep deprivation, for example, his washing machine recently backed up and destroyed his family’s apartment, but even more so is the fact that he has almost 40 different DJs spread out all over the 7 city tour. Most are from Europe, requiring flights, hotels, and transportation.The email inbox starts blowing up again, and must be dealt with as adroitly as a 2 hour window of sleep will allow.
“I do it, because I hate commercial music. I want our own sound.” Says Kari, as I dutifully pry into his life for the benefit of my readers. “This is about us, about sticking to what we want to hear. I don’t really care if people say my line-up is too hard. Well, too bad. This is what Trauma is about. Events you’ll never forget.”
I point out that 40 artists, is a little overboard. “Well, ok, frankly I didn’t see that coming.”
It all happened because DJ Distortion of Rotterdam Terror Corps happened to mention to Kari that he could get a few people to play in America. As soon as the feelers went out, every huge name in hardcore techno immediately lobbied for the gigs. No one took no for answer. Basically, the American market has eluded hardcore techno for decades, and it gnaws at the soul of all hardcore aficionados around the world, because frankly, America seems like the perfect place for it. These names may not mean a lot to the average American yet, but how do you say “no” to Mad Dog, Amnesys, Rotterdam Terror Corps, Tommyknocker, The Melodyst, Scott Brown… the list goes on and on. Though such a line-up might exist in Europe, such a tour as this does not. Everyone constantly undercut each other’s playing fees because they HAD TO PLAY. Everyone wanted to play. It was as simple as that. And when you have the combined talent, basically a line-up that would be historical anywhere in the world, well… you roll with it.
Vowing to document this first historical tour, I find myself jetting to its first stop in North America, Edmonton, Alberta, where it’s -11 degrees Celsius. “Well, we looked at the map and it seemed there were lots of harder styles fans in a few of these areas, basically.” Kari explained. I’m thinking like, “but this is like 12 degrees Fahrenheit,” but Trauma picked their first cities. Edmonton is the first stop before San Francisco, Los Angeles, Phoenix (Mesa), Denver, Pittsburgh, and New York. So I packed up the long underwear, gloves, ski jacket, toboggan, a few stacks of The Hard Data magazine, and my trusty smartphone, and I board the plane for Canada….
