On October 12th, Diplo came to The Academy on Abbey Street to play alongside UCD Ents DJS. Those who went saw all the shenanigans, including him trying to get girls to come on stage to twerk. The vibe he brought to the Academy was incomparable. Diplo stirred up the crowd with UCD chants after UCD’s Entertainment Manager, Paul Kilgallon, opened up the night which had everyone bopping from the get go, getting sweat and sexy. But where do we go from here?
Diplo is a huge name and and with creators come imitators. His style of trap with heavy drops is now common among many other artists, many of them being ones to watch out for. Let this article be your intro to an insight into these other artists. But first, what is trap?
Trap Music is defined by StoneyRoads.com as an “aggressive attitude in sound, incorporating bass, triangle, snappy snares and hi-hats, loud kicks, and booming 808’s from the Southern Crunk scene”. But like most dance music it is constantly changing. One of the first big songs to come from the trap scene was Baauer’s “Harlem Shake”.
A big name coming out of San Francisco, USA at the moment is Bassnectar. He became huge back in 2011 with this remix of Ellie Goulding’s “Lights” and in 2013 with his remix of Nina Simone’s “Feeling Good”. But more recently he has made his way into the Trap scene with his own songs like “You & Me” and “Noise”.
Diplo released a mixtape on Soundcloud in the last week from his time in Paris before he made it to Ireland. On this mixtape was an artist by the name of NGHTMRE, a DJ and producer who has appeared out of nowhere and is creeping his way into the mainstream trap scene. One of my favourites is his remix of Just a Gent’s “Limelight”. Definitely one to watch in the coming future.
If you love heavy drops that never end, this last artist may be the music to your ears that you’ve needed all week. Aero Chord from Athens in Greece is a 23 year old prodigy of the trap scene. I highly recommend you give him a listen if you liked what you heard in the Academy. His song “Surface” has raked up a whopper 16.9 million views on YouTube. Definitely check out his remix of Just a Gent’s “Limelight”.
For those of you who took your shirts off on Monday night and twerked like you’ve never done so before, hats off to you. But to the unfortunate others who didn’t get to witness the jaw dropping sounds of Diplo, I hope this gives you a small insight to what is out there.
- By Luke Fitzpatrick, Music Contributor
