Friday night, July 27th, Steve Aoki will be d.j.ing at Volar. Is this guy a d.j., a clothing designer, or a record label head? It seems that these days, everyone does all three.
Steve Aoki is in good company. He’s down with many other heavily talented, multi-tasking individuals such as Busy P, a man well known to H.K. as: the founder of Ed Banger Records; the French group Justice’s biggest cheerleader; and the former manager of Daft Punk. Have a look at the the splash page for Steve Aoki’s record label, Dim Mak, and you’ll see an ad for the limited edition Ed Banger X Dim Mak t-shirt. Check out his clothing line. I cracked up laughing just looking at the site. The models are like rejects from Napoleon Dynamite, and some of the drawings, or should I say scrawl-ings, look like they were done by Napoleon types as well. BUT, make no mistake, there’s a certain aesthetic being cultivated here, and compared to all the clean, manicured, carefully computer-crafted designs, a shaky hand drawn image has a certain warm appeal. This off-beat aesthetic may also apply to his music. I’m curious enough to catch his set on Friday!
