Last September, music magazine Spin wrote that America was experiencing an "electronica revolution." Spearheaded by speaker-destroying producers such as Skrillex and Deadmau5, Spin wrote that a "new rave generation" has helped make electronic dance music an inescapable presence on the nation's music scene, to the point this bass-heavy sound has seeped into contemporary pop and hip-hop hits.
As dance music becomes more omnipresent in America, it also stands the chance of becoming further commercialized and streamlined into a style resistant to experimentation. Travis Egedy, who records as Pictureplane, makes dance music outside of the mainstream. He's part of a growing underground scene of musicians swirling 1990's rave, modern-day pop and '70s rock samples into Day-Glo dance tracks. Egedy, who will play shows in Tokyo and Osaka this weekend, has described his approach as a "down-and-dirty punk kind of music, but made entirely with computers and electronics."
These upcoming shows will be his first in Japan. "I am very excited for it," Egedy says. "I know that I want to do some shopping for clothes and anime, but really I just have a very open mind about everything." His itinerary might be undecided, but Egedy admits he has been influenced by Japanese art. " 'Akira,' 'Ghost in the Shell' and 'Tetsuo: The Iron Man' are some of my favorite movies," he says, "and I am a big fan of Takashi Murakami."