Going turbo: We went raving at Coachella with Dom Dolla and John Summit – Features

If you’ve ever stayed in hostels in Europe, or probably almost anywhere in the world, you know you can always find Australians there ready to have a good time. Same goes for dating a DJ/producer Dom Dolla, whose team is made up of a select team of Australian creative colleagues. And for his big moment at Coachella 2022, he rode deep with a team of around 30 friends from back home, including his sister, who were there to celebrate and support him — and help spark it off, of course. .

Just as Dom welcomed me into his circle with open arms, he befriended Chicago born and raised DJ/producer John Summit. They had admired each other for a while and became DJ correspondents, sending each other music before finally meeting in August 2021, when they performed B2B at Colorado’s World Dance Festival, one of Dom’s first IRL shows since the pandemic began. Since then, they have performed together a handful of times, including twice with Chicago legend Green Velvet, at EDC Orlando 2021 and Miami Music Week last month. Green Velvet was one of their dream B2Bs, so doing a collaboration between the three of them is the next star to catch.

Dom has been a DJ for half his life (he’s 30 and started when he was 15) and started producing at 21. He cut his teeth as a DJ in Melbourne’s vibrant dance scene, working as a graphic designer and club booker to help pay the bills. . It’s now been eight years since his manager James Fava encouraged him to focus on DJing full-time, and he’s quickly started to take more and more space on the local scene. Dom really took off with the huge bangers 2018’s ‘Take It’ and 2019’s ‘San Frandisco’, his US hits, which followed his first big hit, ‘Be Randy’, a collaboration with his friend torrent footin 2017.

Read next: The Golden Age of Electronic Music in Australia

With the momentum he was gaining and the bigger global bookings he was getting, 2020 was shaping up to be a banner year for him. After making her Coachella debut with a surprise set at DoLaB stage in 2019, he was booked for the much larger Sahara and was part of the official lineup for the ill-fated Coachella 2020. Fava’s fiancé blew up, printed and framed the lineup for him. “It’s a dream gig for me, this and EDC,” Dom shares on the drive to the festival on Friday. During the pandemic, he did a few live streams and dropped another hit, “Pump the Breaks,” in 2021. The realization of his dreams was in sight whenever things reopened, and he held on until in the summer of 2021, when he was finally able to travel again. for the shows, thanks to Fava and a few other dance act managers lobbying their government to let them out. (Australia had closed borders during much of the pandemic.)

John had his breakout moment during the pandemic in June 2020, when, after months of sending demos to a contact at Defected, they signed “Deep End”. Before that, he worked as an accountant, producing and DJing on the side, until he was fired in March 2019 for spending too much time on music. It was studying accounting in college that led him to produce dance music, teaching himself Ableton instead of studying the material he hated. He used the layoff as an opportunity to double down on DJing and began booking touring gigs before the pandemic hit. When things went downhill, he pumped leads with a “do or die” attitude that clearly paid off. He played outdoor shows socially distanced when it was a thing, and began to build a following on social media with his self-deprecating sense of humor, documenting the tough side of his career. Since the events started coming back more or less for real in the summer of 2021, both artists have been making up for lost time with busy touring schedules. And their impact on the dance scene and their trajectory to headlining status was evident at Coachella 2022.

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