There's been a rumbling from the recently-completed Burning Man festival, Seth Troxler, and Jack U that definitely had us confused. According to Pulse Radio, Seth Troxler was booked for Burning Man's Robot Heart stage on Wednesday, but apparently "refused to play after his entourage was denied access to join him behind the decks." As the story goes, Burning Man decided to book Jack U in Seth's place, and all was supposedly going well until Diplo hopped on the decks and dropped DJ Snake & Lil Jon's "Turn Down For What," which is said to have elicited boos. Without video or audio of the event, it's hard to say what happened, but everyone assumed "stupid Diplo, why would you play that track at Burning Man?"
Now, my immediate thought was: is it Burning Man's fault or is it Diplo's? It goes back to the idea of knowing who you're booking; how can you assume that the crowd who'd want to hear Seth Troxler would want to hear Diplo? We know they produce two different sounds, why would they DJ similar sounds? You can't get behind DJ Shadow for sticking to his morals after being kicked off the decks in Miami then point fingers at Diplo for doing his thing—a thing that you already know will include "Turn Down For What," for good or ill. Oddly enough, once everyone latched onto that story, Diplo started speaking out:
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That wasn't all, though; Diplo went all TwitLonger with the following statement on the situation:
"Despite rumors .. I wanna thank robot heart crew for putting together and awesome lineup or surprise guests and attendees that is gettin lost in a really lame false news story.. Although robot heart is anonymous and strictly a deeply quiet crew .. One of the founders .. Jaspn swamy loves this funny moment and is astounded that this is one of the busiest press stories from this years burning man.. Not only me and skrillex popped in but also above and beyond , thievery corp and Seth and many more underground artists.. No one is ever listed or promoted and all the lineups word of mouth .. I have been friends of Jason (who's has booked me outside of bm in other countries) for many years and nothing on hear articles is true .. There was no booing .. No bad vibes ... Nothing about seth troxler was true either... I wanna say one thing... I'm a dj thru and thru .. We did about 8 sets thru our few days at BM.. Ranging from trap dubstep at question mark to uk bass on the opulent temple .. Dub and classic reggae on the dancestranaught car and even deep techno and tribal house on robot heart.. Everyone on stage had a fun moment when we played a few tunes as we were Just killing time while the next dj was setting up.. We weren't kicked off or booed .. Jus wrapped our set up with an inside joke ... And of all the stories to come out after an amazing week... This is pretty tabloidish that's not what burningman is about.. Everything we did there was good fun and all the people that attended knows it.."
With that said and done, Skrillex also noted that Jack U will be doing a make-up gig for the New York area due to the cancellation of Electric Zoo 2014's Day 3:
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And for those of you who are wondering about Jack U at Burning Man for 2015:
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(inthemix)
