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DJ Mag Top100 DJs
28
Marshmello
| NEW ENTRY

In just over a year, Marshmello has gone from bedroom unknown to worldwide star. It was only March 2015 that he uploaded his first song ‘WaVeZ’ to Soundcloud, but it soon turned heads with its popping trap production, wild sub-bass and cut-up vocal samples. More tracks followed and continued to fuse so-called future bass and future house with prog and trap, and eventually maximalist dance star Skrillex re-posted one of them on his SoundCloud page — from then on, Marshmello has been in sharp ascendency. 

January this year brought a self-released debut album, ‘Joytime’, which packed a real punch across ten tracks on his own Joytime Collective label. It immediately climbed up the iTunes charts and spawned singles ‘Keep It Mello’ with rapper Omar LinX and ‘Want U 2’. High-profile headline slots at festivals around the States ensued, with one appearance at Electric Daisy Carnival seeing Tiesto pretend to unveil himself, live on stage, as the then-unknown Marshmello. 

It was later disregarded as a publicity stunt when the two were photographed — both wearing helmets — back-stage. Only recently did the world finally work out who Marshmello really was when Skrillex unwittingly gave up his identity via a post on social media. 

We now know the project to be the work of American DJ Chris Comstock, also known as Dotcom. His preference for anonymity probably explains why “the rest of the questions aren’t really questions we’d like to answer” when asked by DJ Mag for comment on the last year. What we do know, thanks to a Twitter announcement, is that Marshmello will play the Ritual Tour and will play in several countries including the United States, China, South Korea, India and Paraguay between now and the end of January next year. KRISTAN CARYL