Indie tastemakers and fans gathered in the “VIPfest” Turntable.fm room last Monday night where Philadelphia-based DJ Diplo premiered three new Major Lazer tracks.
On June 28, Carles of the blog Hipster Runoff posted a Twitpic invitation to #VIPfest, a Turntable.fm room promising “appearances” by Diplo, Vampire Weekend frontman Ezra Koenig, Ariel Pink, Pitchfork founder Ryan Schreiber and more. The twitpic invite divulged that Hipster Runoff (@hipsterrunoff) and indie blog Gorilla vs. Bear (@gorillavsbear) would tweet “URL wristbands” for entry into the “exclusive” DJ room.
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However, unlike a live music festival, audiences on the Turntable.fm dancefloor have almost complete control over the DJ’s reign. Under the moniker, “the REAL DIPLO,” the Major Lazer DJ took to the turntables and spun a portion of a new Major Lazer track, “MI Bugle No 3rd T2,” as well as an untitled track, but they were received negatively by the critical, mostly anonymous audience. And so, Diplo left the room. After expressing his disappointment through Twitter, Diplo re-entered the room and played a third song, cryptically titled “ML II Mystic Bubble T2 3rd.”
Unfortunately, Diplo did not realize the “ding” sound on the website’s chat feature could be muted, and bloggers jumped on the opportunity to rip the tracks off Turntable.fm and leak the material, angering the DJ. The tracks have since been removed, but Major Lazer dropped the previously unreleased “German Elephant Killer,” which is currently streaming on the Major Lazer Facebook fan page.
But evidently, the Turntable incident did not completely deter the social media-savvy DJ from making use of the website: Mad Decent recently started its own Turntable room, allowing artists to test out new material before a live audience. Last night, Mad Decent (@maddecent) tweeted, “brand new unreleased shit coming up on turntable.fm/mad_decent.” Eager listeners awaited the arrival of artist Paul Devro in the room led by Mad Decent label manager, Jasper Goggins.
Listen: “German Elefant Killer,” Major Lazer
Diplo also announced via Twitter that he would be revealing the details of this summer’s Mad Decent “Block Party” today. Stay tuned to Billboard.com for the schedule and lineup.