“Althouth he’s played sold-out arenas around the world, EDM sensation Avicii makes music history September 27th when he becomes the first DJ to headline a show at Radio City Music Hall in New York. Even envisioning performing at the iconic venue is a shock, the DJ tells Rolling Stone. “It’s unbelievable that I’m going to play there,” says Avicii, born Tim Bergling. “It’s really more of a prestigious thing for me. It’ll be cool that no other DJ has been there before which makes it even more, you know, like a fun thing to do and something that a lot of people I don’t think would have expected.”
Avicii’s Radio City gig was announced yesterday as part of a multi-city North American fall tour that finds the Swedish superstar crisscrossing the continent, touching down at a variety of venues on college campuses, in Las Vegas and at the Austin City Limits Music Festival. The historic Radio City show follows less than a year after his countrymen in Swedish House Mafia became the first EDM act to sell out nearby Madison Square Garden. “It’s been coming for awhile,” Avicii says of the genre’s global takeover, “but this year it’s just skyrocketed. The EDM world is really on top of its game right now.”
The 22-year-old, who recently headlined Lollapalooza perched atop a massive skull-like apparatus, decks at arm’s reach, says a comparatively intimate performance at a venue like Radio City offers fans a chance to better experience his sensory-shaking stage production. “We have done smaller theaters before and it looks amazing,” he says. “Especially then, if it’s not one of those really huge arenas, you can really see the production in its fully glory.” Although Avicii’s nonstop touring affords him little chance to get his hands dirty with such production-related decisions, he says he has complete confidence in the choices his manager and artistic director make. “They do such an amazing job and are so competent,” he says.
Coming off the release of a collaboration with Lenny Kravitz on “Superlove” and his most recent single, “Silhouette,” Avicii says he plans to return to the studio “in a couple of weeks” and has “about 10 or 12” tracks he’s readying for release. With some vocal touch-ups yet to do, the DJ says he’s aiming to release a slew of tracks later this year or early in 2013. “There’s no lack of music,” he says. “I have a lot of solo releases lined up. There’s going to be a lot of songs.”
But DJ’ing is only part of Avicii’s recent global domination: he’s also the new face of Ralph Lauren Denim & Supply. Is he prepping for a second career as a fashion icon? “I don’t know about that,” he says, laughing. “It just felt right from the first moment they said they wanted to do something together. We were like ‘Yah, let’s go!'”
[via RS]
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