This year’s SnowGlobe Music Festival features a diverse spectrum of artists from around the world who will come together for a three-day genre-defying celebration of all things melodious.
SnowGlobe Music Festival
Dec. 29-31 | Lake Tahoe Community College | South Lake Tahoe
“When we started it was much more regionalized, so it’s cool to see how it’s grown and evolved,” says festival founder Chad Donnelly. “Each year is meant to be a different experience while keeping the core themes intact. Ultimately, between the artists and attendees, the experience all comes down to the people.”
WATCH:
San Holo’s Light music video
DROELOE’s “We Don’t Talk Anymore” with Selena Gomez
Brownies & Lemonade documentary
According to Donnelly, last year’s festival included attendees from 47 different countries and this year’s lineup features performers from France, United Kingdom, Germany, Philippines, Australia and cities across the United States.
“If Beethoven were alive today, he’d probably be a producer with a laptop.”
–Sander van Dijck aka San Holo
I recently caught up with two of the current lineup’s artists from Holland. Both San Holo and DROELOE have come to international prominence over the past several years as some of the foremost purveyors of future bass.
Sander van Dijck first garnered attention as San Holo with his remixes of classic hip-hop tracks such as Dr. Dre’s “The Next Episode.”
“Everybody told me those tracks are classic so I can’t touch them,” van Dijck says. “That only made we want to do it more.”
His 2016 original release, “Light,” which spent 20 weeks on the Hot Dance/Electronica Billboard charts, drips with textured sawtooth synth and emo vocals laid over a trap beat, all signatures of the future bass sound.
“It’s pretty common for musicians to not like the label or box they are put in, but I love the term future bass,” he says. “It was about a mindset of doing innovative things.”
The sound San Holo helped to establish can now be found everywhere from pop radio to television jingles after getting blown up by Grammy winners The Chainsmokers and others.
“Future bass is history,” says van Dijck. “It’s become a standardized formula, but my sound keeps evolving. I’m just making music without any boundaries. That’s what future bass was always about to me — breaking all the rules.”
The producer started his own label, bitbird, which supports up-and-coming artists interested in expanding musical frontiers.
“Bitbird is about pushing the future sound, promoting the things that are weird and different and creating new genres with no boundaries,” he says. “We want to realize the music of people that don’t want to fit into a certain box.”
One of the groups the label has taken under its wings is DROELOE (pronounced “drooloo”). This duo caught the attention of listeners worldwide with their remix of Charlie Puth’s “We Don’t Talk Anymore,” featuring Selena Gomez.
“We try to tell stories through our music,” says Vincent Rooijers of DROELOE. “We want our listeners to get that feeling, vibe and emotion from beginning to end.”
Both artists will be part of the Sierra Stage on New Year’s Eve where Brownies & Lemonade will be hosting a curated lineup of new DJs. The Los Angeles event-production company has gained admiration in the scene for breaking out acts in the intimate house-party atmosphere of their community-based activations.
“We like to make a personal connection with our fans even though we are at a festival,” says Brownies & Lemonade creative director Chad Kenney. “In its roots, EDM has always been all inclusive. It’s sort of like a no-judgment zone and a safe space for everyone. While other musical genres are limited, EDM is everything. That is one of the reasons I got into it and began to see it as a true art form.”
Although he didn’t originally set out to be a DJ after graduating from music school in Rotterdam, San Holo believes that EDM allows artists like himself the unlimited freedom of expression needed for contemporary music to continue its forward progression.
“Every artist wants to evoke feeling,” says van Dijck. “You’ve got an hour to entertain the audience and every choice you make or thing you say is going to affect how they feel. If the people go to a show and you press one button and they feel amazing afterwards, who am I to say that’s wrong? It’s the most beautiful thing in the world to lock in with other minds and other human beings in a shared energy. If Beethoven were alive today, he’d probably be a producer with a laptop.” | snowglobemusicfestival.com
