MIXX
There was a time when Labor Day Weekend was kind of a bittersweet holiday here in Atlantic City. Sure, as a beach resort we partied hard at the unofficial end of the summer, but it was also the end of the season and things we’re about to quiet down until spring.
Well, that quieting down part is long gone and we at Borgata Hotel Casino & Spa go full blast 24/7, 365 days a year. But we still love to party on Labor Day Weekend.
So that’s just sweet, no bitter.
To celebrate the end of summer, Borgata Hotel Casino & Spa has put together a line-up like no other on the Jersey Shore for this Labor Day Weekend. From casino promotions to concerts and shows to the best nightclub action anywhere, we’ve got the perfect holiday celebration to see out a long summer season.
Check it out:
We start our Pick the Pros Football Challenge—which runs through the season until the Big Game—on Labor Day Sept. 7. That’s also the date of the $100,000 Cash Sweepstakes with a $25,000 grand prize.
There are a lot of ways to describe the great DJs Borgata Nightlife brings to our nightclubs at Borgata Hotel Casino & Spa.
House DJs are electro, tribal, progressive, tech.
Dillon Francis adds a category that you rarely hear—social media comedian.
Francis, who plays MIXX August 2 has made quite a name for himself as a comedian both on his website and through social media.
Really. The guy’s funny with posts about Doughnut Awareness week, the enormous pickle he likes to tour with and his top five sexiest Electric Daisy Carnival moments (1. Showing Off His Pickle In Front Of A Helicopter – Warning: HIGHLY DANGEROUS), among a million other topics.
“People always ask me about my social media antics and where I get my ideas. But that’s just how my crazy brain works,” Francis said in a recent essay he wrote for medium.com.
Even his new EP that’s about to drop is humorously named “This Mixtape is Fire,” after all of the fire mixtape memes around the web (he advises you not to handle it without protective equipment).
New mixtape you ask?
Yes, once again, Borgata Nightlife’s timing is perfect.
Francis has just unveiled the details for his much-discussed EP, a project that’s been a year in the making. It’s a seven-track that features some of the biggest names in electronic music including Skrillex, Calvin Harris and Chromeo.
Tritonal—the American DJ duo of Chad Cisneros and Dave Reed that have become a rising star in the EDM world—hits Borgata’s MIXX Nightclub June 27 and the timing couldn’t be more perfect.
With their recently dropped track “Untouchable,” done in collaboration with another Multiple DJ force Cash Cash, the duo is back on the cutting edge—as if they’d ever been off. Collaborations between vocalists and DJs are always noted, but lately more and more DJs themselves have been working together producing a string of EDM hits.
“Untouchable” is a melodic, big room anthem that features James Abrahart, also known as J Hart, on vocals.
Tritonal previously remixed Cash Cash’s “Surrender,” but this time the two DJ teams hit the studio together.
“The song came from such an inspirational place,” Reed and Cisneros told Billboard.com, calling the week-long collaboration a year highlight. “Upon finishing, we all felt we’d written a special one.”
It’s all pretty normal for the Texas-raised DJs who have been putting out hits since they formed their duo in 2008 after meeting in an online music chatroom. Of course, back then they were known as producers of trance, but they’ve spent the last six years moving steadily into the EDM scene with a progressive house sound.
“We came up as trance artists and we still love trance,” Cisneros told edmsauce.com in a recent interview. “It just got to a place where it felt like we were starting to do the same thing. At the end of (the album) “Piercing the Quiet” we were doing that electro-trance thing and we were just kind of done with it.”
Memorial Day Weekend marks the unofficial start of the summer season.
But then you knew that.
For us here in Atlantic City, however, it’s so much more. Summer is everything in these parts—the start of a three-month party of sun, surf, great music, great food and just constant entertainment.
Of course, we do party 365 days a year at Borgata Hotel Casino & Spa, but when summer comes, well, we really party. And forget about June 21, summer starts this weekend at Borgata and we’ve got the line-up to welcome the season like it’s never been welcomed before.
Check it out:
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What is it about Dutch DJs?
We only ask because Borgata Nightlife is proud to present another of the hottest DJs on the House Music scene when Fedde Le Grand plays MIXX with Borgata DJ Carlos Melange May 23.
And he’s Dutch. And it’s, like, the third Dutch DJ we’ve had at Borgata Hotel Casino & Spa this year.
Ok, maybe that’s not that many.
But even Le Grand knows what we’re talking about when he outlined why Dutch DJs have so much success in an old 2009 interview.
“Well we have a long history of dance music in Holland, it first started with the trance guys being successful, then the progressive guys and now house which is quite funny when you think about it. The trance guys started to have a lot of success so people were like – oh it’s a way to get across the borders and develop further afield.”
“For bands it’s extremely hard, almost impossible to build up an international notoriety other than in Belgium or Germany. However with dance music, artists proved you could go global and I think that appeals to a lot of young people. That’s why they get involved with dance music. But the other thing is now there are so many kids and young people producing so the competition is really high and you really have to stand out if you want to break through.”
Le Grand stood out.
There was a time when the only place to hear dance music was in a dance club. Sounds simple enough.
But then came groups like Swedish House Mafia, who took dance music the festival route and proved a dance music show could fill American arenas—make that big American arenas.
But for DJs like Steve Angello—the former Swedish House Mafia member who plays MIXX May 16 with Sebjak and opening and closing sets by Borgata DJ Carlos Melange—those old club days never left him.
And Borgata Nightlife is proud to be part of his current North American club tour.
Angello has always worked apart from Swedish House Mafia and produced a string of club hits that stretches back to 2004 when he released his remix of the classic Eurythmics’ tune “Sweet Dreams.”
He’s a Greek-born, Swedish raised DJ that also produces and owns his own record label. From there, it’s hard to keep track of absolutely everything he has produced—sometimes using different names—and put out.
It’s easier to keep track of Swedish House Mafia, which was composed of him, Sebastian Ingrosso and Axwell. Together they have produced hits such as “Save the World”, “Antidote”, “Greyhound”, “One”,”Miami 2 Ibiza” and “Don’t You Worry Child”.
Of course, the group has split, but Angello downplays any rumors of a rift between the mates.
You have to wonder sometimes what’s going on in Holland’s dance scene that allows it to keep producing some of the hottest DJs on the music scene.
Case in point, Sunnery James and Ryan Marciano who will appear at Borgata Hotel Casino & Spa’s MIXX nightclub tonight, April 10 at 10pm.
As recently as 2008 these two were working retail jobs before they exploded on the dance scene with their funky House and Tribal sound. First the duo conquered their home country and then they took their sound worldwide.
Now their sets are known as one of the best live experiences at clubs around the world, what with their hair flopping and body rockin’ energy that can bring a crowd to a frenzy.
The duo recently reinvented themselves with their “Sexy By Nature” radio show, which features their latest tracks such as “Karausell” and switches between House music and Dutch tribal sounds.
“We just do what we do always,” James tells youredm.com after a recent gig in Miami. “Our sets have very different tracks in them and try to make every style fit, which is what we bring to our production too. Our last track was a little more radio-ready, but now we’re going back to this tribal underground feel, and then the next track is progressive. We look at our sets and we ask ‘What’s missing?’ and then we make it. If you play the same stuff for two hours straight it’s boring.”
No, James and Marciano are never boring. The duo appears with Borgata House DJ Ps1 Friday April 10 at 10pm at MIXX. Advance tickets are $25 and available here.
For a guy who sports the name Laidback, veteran DJ Laidback Luke comes off as anything but.
Consider that he’s just released a new collaboration alongside Tujamo titled “S.A.X.”, just released a 2015 remix of his Mixmash Records classic “Rockin with the Best” and is currently on a world tour—a tour that comes to Borgata Hotel Casino & Spa at MIXX March 20 as part of our Winter Music Series.
And that’s just to start 2015 after a very busy 2014. But then, Laidback Luke has been doing this for 20 years, so it’s kind of what you’d expect from the former graffiti artist turned DJ.
Since 1995, Luke has a reputation for evolving with the changing face of dance music whether through technical innovation or just plain artistry. And despite his many, many releases (including three albums, the last being “Cream Ibiza Super You & Me” in 2011), Laidback Luke is above all about the live show, as he explains in a recent interview with joonbug.com.
“When I dove into this music, it was all about the cutting edge, new technology. It’s always been about that. It doesn’t matter if you play with vinyl, it doesn’t matter if you play with CDJs, it matters if you play a good set and people enjoy it. I for one am more of the traditional DJ, so I actually like it when I can see people. I was trained as a traditional DJ, but I’m very much open to new techniques.”
Mel DeBarge, who is DJing at MIXX on Sunday, March 15 and a household name on the international party scene, recently sat down with Borgata to answer some questions.
The New York-based DeBarge has emerged as a fixture at exclusive film, music, fashion, philanthropic and private events with clients including Louis Vuitton, Giorgio Armani, Hugo Boss, GQ, Calvin Klein, Nike, Jennifer Lopez, Missy Elliott, Heidi Klum, Kimora Lee Simmons, NBC and Vogue. He’s also a regular at some of America’s most recognizable nightclubs including Avenue and PH-D at The Dream Downtown (New York City), LIV (Miami) and, of course, Borgata Hotel Casino & Spa.
He has an encyclopedic knowledge of music that allows him to draw on a myriad of influences as he seamlessly merges hip-hop, rock, soul, funk, disco and reggae.
“I make sure my personality comes across in my performances,” he explains. “The personal connection with the audience is not only what I enjoy most about deejaying, it’s also the reason I keep the dance floor full.”
Here’s our interview with Mel DeBarge.
At Borgata Hotel Casino & Spa, we love it when local boys make good. Well, local as in “from New Jersey” as the EDM group Cash Cash—from Roseland, New Jersey—makes its way onto the stage at MIXX February 28 as part of its Surrender Tour.
No, they’re not giving up, but rather touring on the strength of their latest chart topper “Surrender”, featuring Julia Michaels, the follow up to their hit “Take Me Home.”
“Surrendering is usually seen as something negative or like a sign of defeat, but this song shows a completely different side of it,” band member Jean Paul Makhoulf recently told RyanSeacrest.com. “Sometimes it’s the fight that kills you, sometimes you don’t even know what you’re fighting for, sometimes surrendering is what sets you free. And I think this song is definitely a great example of that.”
The song is definitely putting the group—comprised of brothers Jean Paul and Alex Makhoulf and Samuel Frisch—on the fast track for 2015 as it climbs the charts (hitting No. 1 on Dance Radio), backed by the recent release of a its slightly NSFW new video.