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Kaskade VibeZ

Twenty-two tracks from an American house producer who made emotional, melodic dance music at a moment when the market wanted aggression.

Kaskade

Ryan Raddon is from Chicago, which matters — he grew up around the birthplace of house music, and his records retain a warmth and a song-orientation that most of the American EDM boom abandoned.

He built his career through the 2000s on progressive and deep house releases, and became one of the biggest live draws in American dance music without ever really making the hard, drop-driven records that defined the festival era. He is also a practising Mormon, which made him an unusual figure in a scene not known for sobriety, and he has spoken about it candidly.

His defining quality is melancholy. Kaskade records are frequently in minor keys, built around a vocal hook that sounds like a regret, and designed to work at four in the morning rather than at peak time.

What to listen for

"Move for Me" and "I Remember" with deadmau5 are the two essentials. Both come from the period when the two producers were collaborating regularly, and "I Remember" in particular — nearly ten minutes in its full form — is one of the most beloved progressive house records ever made. The vocal mix appears here twice, which is worth it.

"4AM" and "It's You, It's Me" are the deep house end and the records his longest-standing fans hold closest.

"Room for Happiness" with Skylar Grey and "Where Are You Now" with Tamra Keenan are the vocal-led ones.

"SupaStar" is his remix of Floetry, and it is the best argument on this list for house as a form of soul music — a Philadelphia neo-soul record rebuilt for a Chicago floor.

"Baby Mine" from Dumbo, in a house version, is the strangest thing here, and "i can't make you love me" takes on the Bonnie Raitt song.

Go deeper

Fire & Ice (2011) and Strobelite Seduction (2008) are the albums, and the Redux EPs are where his deep house instincts are purest.

For the Chicago house he descends from: Frankie Knuckles, Larry Heard (as Mr. Fingers), Ron Hardy and Marshall Jefferson. Larry Heard in particular is the direct ancestor of everything melancholy in house music.

And deadmau5's Random Album Title is the companion record to their collaborations.

A last note on the Chicago inheritance. It is easy to hear Kaskade as an EDM-era figure because that is when he filled arenas, but the melancholy in these records comes from somewhere older — the deep house that Larry Heard and Ron Hardy were making in Chicago while he was growing up there. Deep house was always sad music you could dance to, and that is the tradition he has stayed inside for twenty-five years while the market moved repeatedly around him.

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