News flash: Electronic dance music is in again. So says the latest Deadmau5-adorned cover of Rolling Stone and everyone else calling the genre by its ubiquitous new acronym, EDM.
Probably nobody in the Twin Cities should be happier about the genre's revival than DJ and event promoter Jack Trash. He's busier than ever but not all smiles.
Through his decade-old company, SIMshows -- "SIM" for Sound in Motion -- the Trash man has a hand in basically all of this summer's biggest dance music events, including the Silent Disco lineup at the River's Edge Music Festival last month and last week's well-attended concert at Epic featuring Skrillex protege Porter Robinson.
Beginning Wednesday, he is involved in the three-night Global Dance Festival at the Brick, part of an AEG Live-produced tour that kicks off here with such trance, house and dubstep music-makers as Above & Beyond, Dillon Francis, Knife Party and AC Slater. Trash's biggest gamble is as co-promoter of Summer Set, the new festival coming Aug. 24-26 to Somerset Amphitheater with an all-things-danceable lineup featuring rap, jam band and electronic music stars.
Trash saw the writing on the wall last summer when tickets to his Skrillex show at the Skyway Theatre sold out far ahead of time, as did Avicii in January at Epic.
He's not saying things have changed for the better, though. At least not locally.
"Things have gone so mainstream and corporate, the price of everything has gone up. That's made it a little difficult for us here in Minneapolis," Trash said. "I've had to turn down a number of artists because I don't think we can support the kind of numbers their agents are expecting to get."
Some of Trash's peers in the local EDM scene also say the music's mainstream revival has required a lot of adjustment locally.
