Giving the keynote address at the inaugural EDMBiz conference in Las Vegas, a confab about electronic dance music, Craig Kallman of Big Beat Records said it was a thrill to see the music business come back around to the artistry of the DJ.
One of the biggest imprints in today's dance music, indie record label Big Beat was founded by Kallman in 1987 when he was an avowed house scene gadfly. It turned heads in the New York electronica scene before eventually folding into Doug Morris' Atlantic Records in the early '90s, bringing with it a roster of dance and hip-hop artists. Kallman eventually rose to become chairman and chief executive of Atlantic Records, and his ascent at the company dovetailed neatly with the popular rise of the electronic dance music that was his first passion.
So when Atlantic wanted an imprint focused on EDM in 2010, reviving Big Beat seemed an obvious answer. It clearly worked -- it's home to Skrillex, possibly the most vital artist in electronica right now, alongside a stable of cred-building dance bands (Metronomy, Chromeo) and singles-smashing producers (Martin Solveig).
"If you slice me open, I'm just a house DJ inside," he said. The return of Big Beat was "born out of the incredible innovation coming out of the electronic music space. The technology is so advanced and producers are crafting such exciting sounds. It's been such an interesting migration of creativity, and this was a moment to activate it again. The first person we identified for it was Sonny Moore, who became such a transformational artist as Skrillex."
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