Planet's Mad

2020 release. A world much like our own. The streets are empty. Panic is in the air. Mayhem is on the horizon. There's a rogue planet hurtling through the cosmos on a direct course for Earth, and there's nothing we can do about it. Welcome to Planet's Mad, the epic new experience from dance music mad scientist Baauer. Baauer's never been a straightforward EDM musician. Revisit 'Harlem Shake,' eight years after it's world-shaking breakout success, and you might be surprised to notice the sonic allusions to 80s-era electro rap and New York Latin flavor right in there alongside the drop heard 'round the Internet. His hip-hop heavy 2016 debut Aa brought him deeper towards his goal of making a 'weird, in-between thing that doesn't fit in one box,' as he puts it. Planet's Mad brings it all the way there, plowing through genre barriers until it all bleeds together into something too crazy and complex to be pinned down. This time out Baauer's going back to the sounds that were in his ears when he first started making beats at age 13. There are huge gobs of arena-sized 90s big beat and the unabashedly exuberant maximalism of Fatboy Slim and Basement Jaxx, which he channels through live samples, surreal synths, and breakbeats driven deep into the red. It's a whole universe that Baauer's inviting us into, and the album's only the beginning. 'I want to tell stories, more than just make records,' Baauer says. 'I'm interested in branching out into different mediums and trying to build a bigger world.'