STEVE AOKI TALKS SCIENCE, TELEPATHY, TELEKINESIS & THE FUTURE

When we think of EDM, one of the first names that come to mind is Steve Aoki. His shows are every EDM lovers’ dreams and is the ultimate party made famous with his iconic cake throwing, crowd rafting, champagne popping and CO2 sprayers, that gets the crowds raving. He’s Aokified almost every nation and is on Forbes world’s highest-paid DJs ranking 5th in the Electronic Cash Kings’ list this year.  He just released the first part of his second studio album Neon Future 1 a few months ago and Neon Future 2 will be coming out in 2015. Across the record, it features collaborations with diverse artists from different genres including Fall Out Boy, Linkin Park, Waka Flocka Flame, Snoop Dogg, Kid Ink and wil.i.am. 

On his Australian tour headlining Stereosonic and as a keynote speaker at Elecronic Music Conference (EMC) in Sydney, I got the chance to have a one-on-one with him. We spoke about his thoughts on the Australian electronic music scene, releasing new music under an alias, his shows and what Neon Future is all about. We also got a little deep chatting about some science stuff, telepathy, telekinesis, the future and energy. He might just be EDM’s philosopher king. 

THUMP: You just spoke at Electronic Music Conference (EMC) in Sydney, why do you think it’s important for you to take part in conferences like this?
Steve Aoki: I think there’s so much that goes on behind the scenes that doesn’t get discussed. Obviously when people see DJs, they just see us performing. For all the people or fans out there, and I mean, I’ve been one of them, you want to know how it all started, what the failures were, what drove them or how they got from one place to another. This is where you can discuss that. 

What do you think of the Australian electronic music scene and are there any artists you have your eyes on?
Yeah, I’ve been hearing about SLUMBERJACK. I want to check them out. As far as the Australian scene, your Melbourne bounce sound is blowing up. I’ve been really close and supporting on Dim Mak, Deorro who’s been championing that sound from LA, so I’m very familiar with it. We have an artist out here called Uberjak’d, who’s just killing it right now. We’ve been putting out a lot of his music on Dim Mak too. I think that sound is kind of blowing up. There’s obviously more than that sound out here. But yeah, I’m here to hear more! 

You started music in the hardcore punk scene, would you say that EDM is a contemporary form of punk or if you see any parallels?
I wouldn’t say EDM is punk but I’d say like when I was part of Electro back in ’06 or ’07, that was absolutely the punk side of dance music at large. Like there’s the status quo of dance music and then there’s Electro which was the noisy, underground dance culture. Now, I guess EDM you could say is like some bastard child of Electro and Trance coming together because these two worlds formed and all of a sudden that’s what’s playing on the main stage of festivals, so that’s what people see. In many ways, the festival culture kind of gave birth to this idea of EDM. So, it’s a wild ride right now for sure, because there’s nothing like being on main stage and playing in front of so many people. To me, it’s all really based on this level of energy and emotions, and if you can drive that and make people heave and jump all at the same time and be part of that energy, that’s where I’m most attracted to it. 

You have just released your second studio album Neon Future 1. Tell me about the concept.
Neon Future is about a utopian future and it’s based on real stuff. As a kid growing up I was a science fiction nut, so when I started reading  about some science fiction ideas that would actually become real science it got me really excited and I started reading more and more books on it, like topics on singularity or A.I. (artificial intelligence), what’s happening with nano technology and gene therapy and you know, all this stuff surrounding brain science and understanding our brains more is really exciting.

I started interviewing people as well. Interviewing scientists, philosophers, writers and at the same time I wrote a whole body of music which would encompass two albums and called it Neon Future. There’s also Neon Future Sessions Series. I teamed up with Wired Magazine and they’ve helped us produce these interviews I’ve been doing. One that’s out right now is Ray Kurzweil, you know the man that wrote about singularity and the second one will be with Stan Lee who’s the founder of Marvel Comics. I’ve done about ten so far and planning to do some more. 

What’s something interesting you can tell us that you’ve discovered or learnt from interviewing these people and your fascination with science fiction ?
That a lot of these ideas as a trajectory on where we are going with science could happen in our lifetime, which is even more exciting! Because, now we could get to a point where we could actually live indefinitely but look the way you look now and be able to regrow organs that are impermanent or live through different cyborg elements of our body that are impermanent so we don’t actually need that. All kinds of stuff.

I’ve been reading a book called The Future of the Mind by Michio Kaku and he’s talking about telekinesis and telepathy. They’re studying how to be able to be telepathic and understanding it. Like when you think of, lets say a bird, your brain neurotransmitters are doing something to think of that word. There’s probing the brain to understand how to translate what those neurotransmitters are doing so that we understand like – that’s bird, that’s eye, that’s asian, that’s long hair, that’s microphone. So, that way if we could understand and translate that, then we could know what people are thinking without them having to say it. That’s just the brink of understanding something like telepathy to something like telekinesis, where someone that’s paraplegic can actually get a robotic arm to bring an apple and bring it to their mouth. And that is already happening now in 2014, so imagine what could happen in 2024. Our rate of technology is expanding and growing at an exponential rate rather than a linear path so, it’s just really exciting stuff! 

What can we expect from Neon Future 2 that’s coming out in 2015?
There’s going to be some curve balls for what people think of my music because I’m really going a bit farther into different worlds of genres and I’m allowing the bands to help forge that path. Like, this one band Walk Off the Earth I did a collaboration with, they wrote the most beautiful music and I just added to it. I added my sound to it but it allows my fans to see the breadth of the music of where I’m going. It’s not just bangers. I want to be a bit more musical with the approach. There are some new collaborations that may not make the album that will be coming out post Neon Future 2 that are even more musical. So, it’s less about the club and more about the song. When I want to write a club banger I’ll just put out a single.  You’ve collaborated with a lot of artists. Who’s someone you want to work with but haven’t had the chance to yet?  My favourite singer that’s alive right now would be Zack de la Rocha from Rage Against the Machine. It would be a dream and honour to work with him at some point.

So I’ve heard you’re going to start making deep house beats?
Well, the thing is..when I mentioned this to MixMag, I didn’t realise he was part of MixMag and he was going to publish that! I was just talking. We were having a group hang and I was just like – yeah I was in Ibiza being inspired and I wrote a bunch of different kinds of beats and music, just because of being in Ibiza. So, I was like I don’t know what to do with this music, so I’m going to put it under an alias because it doesn’t make sense in the Steve Aoki sound now. These songs, these beats or whatever you want to call them, they’re great! I love them, so I want to get them out, but I want to get them out and have its own space. There’s no big plan around it. There might be a song that may come out and I might put out another, and it’ll live on SoundCloud. The intention is to have no one knows it’s me. I just want to see if it does its thing. I just want to get it out there and have other DJs play it.

With all the crazy things you do at your shows you must injure yourself all the time. What’s been the worst?
I guess the point where I felt like, holy shit I could really be paralysed possibly was when I dove…and this is all on Youtube, it was a major stage dive fail. I was on my DJ booth and I jumped onto a trampoline and when I was in mid-air jumping onto the trampoline, I realised I didn’t know where I would end up going because I was jumping out really high, so I was like.. oh shit I’m going to fuck myself up pretty good on this. I jumped down and boom, I kind of flung wildly in the air and just barely missed the ledge but banged my head pretty hard but just missed my neck. I remember thinking, oh my god I couldn’t move my toes, thank fucking god, holy shit, I almost really fucked myself up  and I eventually got up, and my neck was so incredibly stiff I couldn’t move it. I played for a couple of songs and then I was like, I got to go to the hospital and I went and got a neck brace. There were no injuries, but that was a close call. 

You throw cakes at your shows and one questions I’ve always wanted to ask is how to you keep the cakes consistent touring around the world?
Yeah! We have technical rider and the cake is not part of the food rider. The cake is part of the show rider, so the cake has to have requirements for consistency factors, for explosion factors because I want it to explode on people’s faces and it’s not suppose to hurt. I’ve been caked tons of times from these cakes so, we have to have that specific type of cake to work and it’s been working for like, I don’t know how many shows now! What are your thoughts on some of the criticism some people/purists direct towards the theatrical aspects of some EDM performers, saying it distracts from the music?   I don’t think it distracts the music because I think it elevates people and activates some other level of energy. The way I see it, music is a constant. We’re there for the music and then there’s the different things that happen, at least for me. I just want to add these spikes to kind of throw curve balls at people, so they wake up to change. People love it when the music stops for example. People are like ‘ohhhhhhhh” and the music starts up again. That contrast of change is good in anything. If you have like a monotone discussion about something you might lose some people, but if you have a monotone discussion and then ‘booooom’ something happens, then back into the discussion and then ‘booooom’ something happens, then comes back into discussion, you are going to keep people interested in what you’re saying, what you’re doing or what you’re trying to express. So, that’s how I see it. I think of my show as a flow. Like, I’m flowing, I’m getting to a point where okay now I’m in this place where I’m going to surprise someone and then, boom I surprise them with something. When they come back in, they’re energy is rejuvenated, they’re recycled and then you give them something else and it keeps them going! To me, it’s not a distraction, its more of an amplifying element. 

You are probably one of the busiest touring artists around. How do you find time for family or friends?
I have my family here! I think my brother’s in the room over there with my Mum and my sister. I just try to fly them out whenever we get really cool places where we could do some fun stuff and this is a great opportunity because I have shows on the weekend and we have a whole week off. So, when I’m done with all these interviews, I’m free! I’m going to go hang out with my family! We’re going to go on a boat, chill out, explore Sydney. They haven’t had an opportunity to come down here before so this is fun for them. We get to do cool stuff  in different places around the world. Like, we went to Denver, Colorado and went to this wellness centre and got our blood checked with like fifty vials of blood. The doctor also wrote a book with Ray Kurzweil about how to live as long as possible. 

Does your family get sick of your music?
I never play my music around them. I try to avoid that haha. We don’t play music when we’re a family. We play board games like monopoly. We play like really really boring family stuff but we love it so it’s all good. 

Lastly, If you could tell yourself one thing to your younger self, what would it be?
At what age?  Like maybe when you first started out?
Like 14 or 15… I think the general scope of things I’ve done, I’ve done things the way I would’ve want to do them because I did things because I loved what I was doing and happy at what I was doing. I didn’t start making real money until I was in my late 20s, if you really break down that part of the success because the success I was having, had nothing to do with money. Everything had to do with the creative spirit and having the success of that, reaching people. So, that was by far the most important thing and it still has to be the most important thing in the future and right now. Regardless if I make a lot of money or little, as long as I’m enjoying what I’m doing in creating things that I love, then it doesn’t matter you know? Everything is like a web and flow, you’re going to go down at one point anyways. You can’t always stay on top and as you go down, as long as you love what you are doing it doesn’t matter. That’s your own success. I’d just tell myself to keep on track

Darren Luk is on Twitter, follow him here