Out of context, a 55-city "Execution Tour" may seem like a reason to stay indoors. But in the realm of electronic dance music, a 55-city "Execution Tour" is actually a one-of-a-kind multi-sensory concert experience, and not some serial killer's plot to murder.
Just ask Canadian dubstep DJ and producer Excision.
"The [tour] features every bit of cutting edge technology that we can cram into it, and it's our goal to deliver an experience that is as close as you will get to the future of EDM in today's world," Excision tells New Times.
The DJ took time ahead of his Saturday set at Club Cinema to speak with us about his massive stage show, Destroid side project, and the possibility of working with hologram Tupac.
Peep the Q&A after the cut.
New Times: Let's talk about the Execution Tour. When did the idea for this massive, never-before witnessed stage show come about?
Excision: The new stage "The Executioner" has been in progress since April of last year.... We wanted to get away from the 2D "trippy visualizations" as much as possible. My team and I felt that we had learned enough from Xvision to tackle the entire project ourselves.
I worked with Ben from Beama and went through 66 revisions before we finally settled on the current design. I then went and hired 50 or so animators from around the world, created storyboards of what we wanted each animation to look like, how we wanted it to sync with a specific song and spent a huge amount of time on each of them really dialing it in.
How has the impressive stage show affected the way you perform? Is it a whole new rush now to get out there and watch the crowd go totally bonkers with the visuals? Do you approach music differently because of it?
I wanted to keep everything as close to a traditional DJ setup as possible, and still have the freedom to play whatever tracks in whatever order the crowd wants them.
You might think this has been done before, but every artist I've seen, and I've seen nearly all of them, have a 100% pre-planned set that they literally just press a play button at the beginning of the show and fake it for 90 minutes. Fuck that!
Due to how long it takes for movie-grade animations to be created, I had to be careful about which songs I had them made for. I won't ruin the surprise, but it's going to be an epic set that stays true to my roots, but still has enough diversity to make everyone happy.
