Steve Aoki, Audien, Elephante, RIOT TEN, und BENZI

Born in 1977, he was the son of a famous Japanese wrestler and restaurant-chain owner Rocky Aoki eventually going on to graduate from the University of Carolina. While still in his twenties he found the time to form a record label named Dim Mak in homage to his childhood hero Bruce Lee.

In its infancy, Dim Mak was known for working with a diverse range of artists from all genres and has been instrumental in launching the careers of artists like Bloc Party and The Gossip. The label soon began to focus more on Steve’s specialty, electronic music, and is now recognised as one of most influential establishments in the dance music world.

The label’s profile was further boosted with the release of Aoki’s first album ‘Wonderland’. Featuring artists as diverse as Weezer’s River Cuomo to Kid Cudi it was a huge success with every song on the album being released as a single with its own remixes.

To support his music Steve tours constantly and has become known for unpredictable and exciting live shows. Even while performing an average of 250 shows a year he still finds the energy to be crowd surfing and dancing with his crowds all of which helped him to achieve 6th place in DJ Times magazine’s ‘America’s best DJ competition’ in 2013.

With the release of the first part of his new double-album, ‘Neon Future’ on Dim Mak, Steve looks set to continue to be one of the most popular electronic artists in the world.

You read that right. This guy has a hell of a lot of remixes to his name, 30 to be precise, and he was only old enough to drink by 2013. He started making his own music and beats in 2009, by the age of 17. He tested the waters by tentatively sending his work out to producers the world over.

He was rewarded by being signed to Flashover Recordings, a label owned by Ferry Corsten, a Dutch DJ of no small repute. This led to Audien’s first single released in the same year as well entitled “Rise and Shine”. He then released 16 non-album singles over the course of 2010 and 2011 to complement his 19 remixes over the same period of time.

Clearly this was an artist as prolific as he was talented. He was recognised for this too, with tracks of his appearing on compilations curated by Tiesto, Armin Van Buuren and Above & Beyond. The latter would also premier a track of Audien’s called “Wayfarer” as the very first song played on their radio show Group Therapy, very high praise indeed.

The best part of this is that in the grand scheme of things Audien has barely begun his career. He’s accomplished what most could hardly dream of given a whole lifetime to work and he’s still only just getting started. This will be a very exciting ride from here on out, and any electronica fan would do well to join.