TuneLab
Zhu - EDC Las Vegas Virtual Rave-A-Thon
Of course we were all hunched over our laptops in May 2020, desperately trying to feel a fraction of that festival energy through a pixelated stream—Zhu’s EDC Las Vegas Virtual Rave-A-Thon was a lifeline for the house-starved. The vibe was pure living-room rave, with the glow of the screen replacing the strobes, a private dance floor defined by the reach of your headphone cord. Technically, this is a deep and melodic house journey, averaging a slinky 119 BPM and largely orbiting the melancholic 5B key, with the energy profile heavily weighted in the low-end (0.60) for a body-moving, insistent groove.
The mixing is fluid and cinematic, using harmonic shifts into 2A and 3B to build emotion without ever rushing the pace, letting each bassline and vocal hook breathe fully in the digital ether. For crate diggers, the bold opener ‘Rob Dougan - Clubbed To Death (Kurayamino Variation)’ sets a dramatic, film-noir tone, while ‘ZHU & partywithray - Came For The Low’ is a contemporary deep-house weapon with its warped vocal. Dropping ‘CamelPhat & Elderbrook - Cola’ was a masterstroke of crowd-pleasing nostalgia, and the inclusion of ‘Morttagua - Aten’ shows a keen ear for percussive, driving textures.
The journey is a masterful arc, beginning with that iconic ‘Clubbed To Death’ intro, peaking with the universal sing-along potential of ‘Cola’, and dissolving into the smoky, hometown blues of ZHU’s own ‘Hometown Girl’ to close.