Before he was selling out clubs as a solo artist, Steve Angello and his cohorts helped pave the way for big-room EDM as the now-defunct Swedish House Mafia. With this year’s debut solo album, Wild Youth, Angello breaks from now-mainstream EDM by returning to his more house-friendly origins.
“I just want to show the kids that it’s okay to do something that follows your heart,” Angello says. “It’s okay to make a seven-minute edit of a song. You don’t have to prove yourself to anybody. You don’t have to be a party pleaser. You’re not a jukebox.”
Harkening to his early influences—he says he grew up listening to The Prodigy, The Chemical Brothers and Moby—each starry track on Wild Youth is dancefloor-ready, locked and loaded to take clubbers on a trip of their own. This weekend’s setting, the gargantuan Omnia Nightclub, only amplifies that elation.
“The production level and the club build is one of a kind,” Angello says of Omnia. “It’s really incredible to play there … I do a lot of production myself when I tour and really understand how hard they work. It allows me to take a step back with the track and go on a little bit of a journey.”
There’s no better place to witness the electric dance wizard than here. Steve Angello at Omnia at Caesars Palace, July 8; at Jewel at Aria, July 16.
