(Photo courtesy of Atlantic Records)Knife Party, an acclaimed electronic dance music duo hailing from Australia, played its first show in Arizona on Saturday night at The Pressroom in downtown Phoenix.
Knife Party's members, Rob Swire and Gareth McGrillen, pounded away at their turntables, filling the room and its sold-out crowd with a heavy feeling of bass and melody throughout the night.
The duo first appeared in the electronic scene with its head-turning 2012 single “Internet Friends,” launching the duo’s dance music career.
As the demand for electronic music increased, Knife Party’s career only grew more, and the DJ act found themselves headlining festivals to thousands of fans worldwide.
The buzz surrounding Knife Party reached a dizzying height when their most recent album, “Abandon Ship,” was released in November.
Featuring hits like “Boss Mode” and “Begin Again,” the album combined nearly every genre imaginable, from hip-hop to eighties rock, and became a staple in the electronic music world.
The album’s ominous red cover was lit up behind the duo as a wall of LED lights, adding a bit of theatrical flair to the event.
A smaller outdoor stage kept the party going for the entire city of Phoenix to hear. The pulsing bass could be heard from almost a mile away.
The group’s arrival to Arizona is due to Relentless Beats, a promotion company that specializes in electronic dance music.
Ryan Auhl, a partner of the Arizona-based Relentless Beats, said the process for bringing Knife Party to Phoenix has been in the works for quite some time.
“We’ve been trying to book them for a really long time,” he said. “We’re excited that it finally happened.”
Auhl also expects Arizona to become even more of a hotspot for this vibrant new form of music.
“It’s bigger than it has ever been,” he said. “We added two festivals last year and the Mad Decent Block Party in September sold 8500, making it the biggest dance music festival in the state ever.”
Auhl graduated from ASU in 2011 and began working with electronic artists and show promoters while he was still in school.
“At first, there wasn’t a lot of coverage on campus,” he said. “There weren’t a lot of people into it.”
The cramped crowd in the Pressroom was enough to show that this type of music has staying power and an appeal that connects to people from all different walks of life.
“Dance music has become pop music,” Auhl said. “But at the end of the day, we love the music,”
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