50,000 fans descended into downtown Los Angeles this past Saturday, December 10 for the first ever headlining show at the Los Angeles Memorial Coliseum with electronic music act Kx5 (the powerhouse collaboration comprised of genre icons Kaskade and deadmau5). According to Pollstar, the show broke records landing it as the largest single-day concert event headlined by an electronic music artist ever in North America with Billboard confirming Kx5 at the Coliseum as the biggest ticketed global headliner dance event of 2022.
Presented by Insomniac, the two-plus hour set was highlighted by Kx5 productions out now on mau5trap/Arkade including “When I Talk” with Elderbrook, “Avalanche" ft. James French, “Take Me High” and “Alive” featuring The Moth and The Flame (TMTF) as well as unreleased material. These songs and more were intertwined with special edits of each artists favorite selections including Kaskade’s newest “Dance With Me” with Justus, “Disarm You” & fan favorite, his collab with Skylar Grey “Room For Happiness” and deadmau5 classics “The Veld,” “Ghosts N Stuff” and the song that introduced Kaskade to mau5 “Faxing Berlin.” The two artists closed the show with a surprise appearance from Hayla to perform their Top40 radio smash “Escape.”
Over the course of the set, deadmau5 (Joel Zimmerman) and Kaskade (Ryan Raddon) performed on pods that rotated and moved across the stage while fireworks and flames burst overhead. Dazzling crowds, 300 drones flew high above the Coliseum’s iconic torch and supporting arches creating unique formations including a configuration of the state of California and flashing words “Welcome LA,” and song titles “Alive” and “Escape.”
The triumphant live show from Kx5 has them joining a significant roster of musical acts to have headlined the Coliseum including the Rolling Stones, Pink Floyd, U2, Metallica and Prince just to name a few. The show was a prestigious honor as part of the “Coliseum Forever” event series celebrating the 100th anniversary of the venue.
Kx5 is a collaboration over a decade and a half in the making. In the summer of 2021, Kaskade made history as the first public concert performed at Los Angeles’ SoFi Stadium. The sold-out show featured a surprise set by deadmau5 and had the two artists reuniting again for a set to close the show and catapulted them to start a music project together as Kx5. deadmau5 and Kaskade effectively changed the electronic music landscape when they paired together for 2008’s slow-burning “I Remember” and their follow up “Move For Me” cemented their influence as the standard. Both tracks peaked at No. 1 within a week of one another on Billboard’s Dance/Mix Show Airplay chart. The GRAMMY-nominated artists’ paths crossed again on 2016’s ominous “Beneath with Me” featuring Skylar Grey.
“Escape (featuring Hayla)”—released this past March as their debut single as Kx5—continues to impact at Top40 radio and per Mediabase is the #1 Dance Radio Airplay Song of 2022. “This is of course the duo that delivered us peak ’00s progressive house with their 2008 classic “I Remember,’” shared Billboard upon its release. “…and this new track, ‘Escape,’ gives shades of that song via soft, glowing, slow-build synths that have this pairs’ fingerprints all over them.”
“I Remember” - a genre-defining anthem which recently appeared on Rolling Stone’s ‘200 Greatest Dance Songs of All Time’ list, with the rock bible stating, “…a collaboration between two of the biggest dance stars to emerge in the late 2000s — has an appealing modesty about it, even as it induces mass singalongs at festivals (still).” Since then, they have collaborated on tracks but with Kx5 they have solidified it into a wholly new artistic project, one which will consist of more studio releases in the coming months leading into an album in 2023. Next up find Kx5 headlining Ultra Music Festival in Miami March 2023.
Known as “The Greatest Stadium in the World,” the Los Angeles Memorial Coliseum, a living memorial to all who served in the U.S. Armed Forces during World War I, has been a civic treasure for generations of Angelenos. Named a national and California Historic Landmark in 1984, the legacy of events and individuals hosted in nine-plus-decades reads like no other: the only venue to host two Summer Olympics (Xth Olympiad in 1932, XXIIIrd Olympiad in 1984) and soon a third (XXXIVth Olympiad in 2028); home to college football’s USC Trojans since 1923 and the UCLA Bruins (1928-1981); professional football’s Los Angeles Rams (1946-1979 and 2016-2019), Raiders (1982-1994) and Chargers (1960); hosting three NFL Championships and two Super Bowls; home to the Los Angeles Dodgers (1958-1960) and the 1959 World Series; appearances by U.S. Presidents Franklin D Roosevelt, Dwight Eisenhower, John F. Kennedy, Lyndon Johnson, Richard Nixon, and Ronald Reagan; and international dignitaries such as Martin Luther King, Jr., Cesar Chavez, Pope John Paul II, the Dalai Lama, and Nelson Mandela.
