Sam Vogel, the 24 California based producer has reached viral capacities with his music that has gathered huge fans at Coachella. He tweets responses to fans at the same rate of strategically composing and releasing music; and is currently living in the moment at each event.
He recently released new single “Dance Floor” with SUMR CAMP and debuted his highly-anticipated ‘Baby Shark’ Remix which was mashed together with ‘Sandstorm’ at Coachella. However, with entrepreneurship always in mind, his label ‘Bite This’ took over the Heineken Tent at Coachella before his Sahara stage debut.
The young producer has had multiple sold-out heading tours already — with a new Billboard #1 charting album “The Wise & The Wicked” featuring artists DJ Snake, Adventure Club and Kiiara.
Your ‘Bite This’ label had a special takeover at the Heineken Tent both weekends. What’s the biggest difference between playing the Sahara Tent versus the Heineken Tent? Who’s set on your label were you most excited to see at the Heineken Tent?
Playing at Heineken was almost like playing an after-party after one of my big tour shows. No pressure, just got to rock up and have a good time and play music that I wanted to play. Both sets were completely freestyled, which is a stark contrast to the Sahara tent sets, which we spent weeks on in rehearsals with our new stage production. I love planning out a set and making sure everything feels perfect, but there’s also something to be said about just walking up with not a single clue what you’re going to play and just feeling it out.
The lineup we had for both weekends was so epic but I was especially stoked we got to bring out Holy Goof and Skepsis all the way from the UK for the takeover. Coachella is such a big event for America, so for me to be able to help those guys get exposed to a crowd they might have never been able to play in front of before is a huge deal to me. My goal with the label is really to help bring my influences and artists I believe in from across the world into the states and the Heineken Takeover was a huge opportunity for that.
Funniest thing you’ve seen in comparison from playing Weekend I versus playing Weekend II of Coachella?
I guess the funniest, or most ironic, thing I realized about doing a dual-weekend festival is that even though you think the second show will always be better and more perfect than the first, that’s not always the case. The first weekend went almost perfect, and we were so excited because as a team we thought “OK, the jitters are out of the way, we know exactly what we need to change to make weekend two actually perfect.” Well, we get to show number two, and we ended up having to cut my set 15 minutes short because of a huge production issue that was completely out of our control. Sometimes shit just happens and you have to roll with the punches, and either way both sets still ended up being really amazing.
You officially debuted the Baby Shark remix for the first time during your set weekend one. What was that like?
It felt like taking a million-pound weight off my shoulders! People have been asking for this remix for so long, and I knew if I didn’t play it at Coachella so many fans were going to be so bummed. It honestly took me forever to make a remix that both sounded like me and also sounded natural with Baby Shark… I didn’t want to just slap some crazy drop on top of a children’s song.
I wanted it to feel like they were made for each other, and it wasn’t easy to make happen. But I’m pretty stoked with the final product and it seems from the reactions most people are too! Also the whole “Sandstorm” thing helped quite a bit, that was a Coachella-specific thing though so don’t expect that in the final version of the remix.
So you have a little down time after Coachella before you’re on tour; heading to Canada, Denver, Ostrava, Novalja, Weeze – before playing at Clapham Common. SW4 is no stranger to your appearances – any exciting things you want to tell the fans?
I’m so excited to finally get to do a real ‘Bite This’ takeover across the pond – the UK is such a huge source of inspiration for me musically and playing shows over there always feels extra special. SW4 has always been so good to me and I can only imagine what will go down with Holy Goof and I doing a b2b set there. We’re going to make this one extra special for you guys and I can’t wait to be there!