Dada Life Amps Up Its Evolution

Proud Citizens of Dada Land! Spiff up your banana suits, cite The Rules of Dada and put on your biggest smiles!

Swedish DJ duo Olle Cornéer and Stefan Engblom, who perform as Dada Life, launched “The Compound: Evolved Tour” March 10 in Michigan and will be bringing Dada Land and its “No Rules But The Rules Of Dada” to North America through early May.

And what, you ask, is in store for the dedicated fans during this current trek? According to Dada Life’s Facebook page, “Banana Basketball, Pillow Fights, Hypnosis, Roaming Dada Land Ambassadors, Massive Lasers, Scavenger Hunts, Champagne Showers and loads more!”

How Cornéer and Engblom originally met – at Disneyland – could have been a precursor to the creation of the Dada Land Nation and its related activities. After discovering they were both into electronic music, the two started collaborating back home. The result became Dada Life’s first single, “Big Time,” around 2006.

“We had both been working with electronic music forever,” Cornéer told Pollstar via email. “When we started working together it was natural to bring together our versions of dance music.”

But delivering the duo’s music and message of Dada didn’t make it easy to book gigs in the beginning.

“It was hard! I remember we made vodka – infused bananas on our first gig,” Cornéer said. “They weren’t that good, but people liked the show. So we kept going!”

The duo has also released their Sausage Fattener plugin that is being used by peers Tiësto, Diplo, Laidback Luke and others.

And then there’s the marching band and Guinness World Records.

aLIVE Coverage for Insomniac – Dada Life
Electric Daisy Carnival, Citi Field, New York City

How did your plan to bring Dada to the masses and form Dada Land come about? 

It just felt natural to create our own nation seeing the need from our fans to be somewhere they could be free to be themselves.

Was it obvious to you two when your music started grabbing people’s attention?

Not really. It’s more like we just want the next song to be the best we have ever done. And the next show to be the best we have ever performed. We’re not looking back, only forward. 

I’ve seen the Dada Life video at the 2011 Electric Daisy Carnival in Las Vegas when the marching band came onstage with you. How did you guys make that happen?

They were a local university band. We wanted to create a special experience for the people at EDC. No one expected that, especially back in 2011! It felt amazing!

I’ve also read that Dada Life and its fans are part of two Guinness World Records – 2013’s largest pillow fight at the Aragon Ballroom in Chicago and 2015’s largest gathering of people dressed as fruit at San Manuel Amphitheater in San Bernardino. What prompted you two to go for breaking these records?

We created bigger and bigger pillow fights [during concerts] and at one point we started thinking ‘How big is the largest pillow fight ever?’ And then we started planning. It took months of planning to get everything together … and on the night, we weren’t sure that if we had broken the record, they kept us in suspense until the last minute. … The record with people dressed as fruits – in our case, bananas – was much easier. We just grabbed it!

As your audiences get bigger and bigger, have you had to adapt how you build your shows so you can still interact with your fans as much as possible?

In a way we’re trying to do almost the same thing we’ve been doing from the beginning – just larger. We want people to step into Dada Land and lose themselves for the night. Leave their brain behind. After that they can step back into their ordinary lives, but for that night only they can do whatever they want. No Rules But The Rules of Dada.

Jay West – Dada Life
“Lights All Night,” Dallas Convention Center, Dallas, TX

And on that note, what can the proud Citizens of Dada Land look forward to experiencing on “The Compound: Evolved Tour?”

We’ve been working hard to enhance the experience of Dada Land and bring the experience from the stage into the crowd.  This time it will really feel like you’re entering a different nation, a different country, just for this night only.

With everything that you two have accomplished so far, what’s the next step you’d like to take in Dada Life’s evolution?

We’re releasing our second plugin very soon! I know we have said it a few times and then haven’t delivered. But this time, it is actually finished!

In Dada Land’s vast and ever-widening territory, here’s where Dada Life can be found:

April 7 – Houston, Texas, Revention Music Center
April 8 – Duluth, Ga., Atlanta Coliseum
April 21 – Minneapolis, Minn., Skyway Theatre
April 22 – Washington, DC, Echostage
April 28 – Uppsala, Sweden, Snerikes Nation
April 30 – Lune, Sweden, Malmo Nation
May 5 – Morrison, Colo., Red Rocks Amphitheatre
May 6 – Scottsdale, Ariz., Pool At Talking Sticks Resort
May 6 – Magna, Utah, The Great Saltair
May 19 – Detroit, Mich., Masonic Temple
May 20 – Brooklyn, N.Y., TBA
May 26 – London, England, The Ministry Of Sound
June 6 – Cologne, Germany, Bootshuas
June 24 – Ottawa, Ontario, Escapade
June 30 – Norrkoping, Sweden, Norrköping-Bråvalla Airfield (Bravalla Festival)
July 7 – Borlange, Sweden, Peace & Love Festival Grounds (Peace & Love Festival)

Head over to DadaLife.com for more information.