Fest 411: Harder, Better, Faster, Stronger Stage Sets—Behind Kaskade’s Massive $2M Coachella Production

DJ and EDM producer Kaskade has become well-acquainted with the northern arc of the Colorado Desert – better known as the Coachella Valley, site of the nearly three-decades dominant Coachella Valley Music & Arts Festival, which kicks off the first of two weekends on April 10.

The EDM producer and DJ is back on the festival’s iconic lineup poster this year, last making an appearance among its topline names back in 2015. (He also performed a three-hour set last year alongside Idris Elba on the fest’s Quasar stage, as well as a private party in 2024.) Drone footage from that 2015 set, released by Goldenvoice, showed a vast, practically incomprehensible sea of dancers. This weekend and next, he is set to return to the pre-eminent taste-making fest with a brand-new, very expensive – and likely loss-leading – stage production.

“This is not where [Kaskade wanted to] save money,” manager Ryan Henderson, who’s worked with the artist since 2016, tells Pollstar.

That new production’s budget “will come in over $2,000,000 in the end… just over. I think initially, we had hoped it would be half of that,” says Henderson. (And who wouldn’t?) “It’s an investment, because there’s no making money on the show – the fee is nowhere near what we’re spending. But you hope you’re able to create excitement, showcase the new music, and that it’s gasoline for their career.”

Kaskade is clearly driving this ambitious vision.
“Every time I’ve been invited to Coachella, I ask myself, ‘How I can go further. I want to do more, I want to give more,’” the veteran DJ told Pollstar. “This year it wasn’t lost on me that I’d be compared to myself, my set in 2015 that broke attendance records and had its own extended life online. This is the year I said yes to every idea we’d ever talked about, but never pulled the trigger on.”

The idea of taking a financial hit despite performing on one of the world’s biggest stages, much like the Super Bowl, is not an anomaly, Henderson says, and in the end, it may reap greater rewards. This marquee performance, which can help attract other larger plays and touring opportunities, will feature a selection from Kaskade’s recent release, undux (Arkade/ Monstercat), as well as the premiere of songs from an upcoming album with some guest appearances. Discussions on the ambitious new set began last fall and stretched into the new year while the Coachella deadline crept closer.

“We had meetings with five different production companies,” the manager continues. “Once we got through all those meetings and looked up proposals and fleshed out ideas, we ran into Christmas … We all met in the studio in January, the entire team and decided to go ahead (with the production). Then we’re sitting here in February, and we’re like, ‘Okay, well, February is not very far from April.’”

The work continued through February and March, with rehearsals now underway. First in Vegas and then, as this issue went to print, on the Coachella stage. The production will, the hope is, create a moment as iconic as Daft Punk’s performance with their famed pyramid at Coachella 2007, considered by some to be a festival high-water mark.

But regardless of the scale the price tag implies, the show must go on – quickly. Kaskade’s team needs to operate like an F1 pit-stop crew when the time comes to bring it in front of the festival crowd.

“Act to act, there’s 40 minutes. We get handed the stage over – ideally, knock on wood – 30 minutes before set time. We are rehearsing for a 20-minute build so that we have a 10-minute buffer. So [right now] everybody’s kinda panicking,” Henderson says. “We don’t have the luxury of an extra five minutes. [But] we have an amazing production manager, and we have an amazing team that’s helping execute this. At some point, you gotta stand back and trust the team you built.”

Kaskade released his debut solo album, It’s You, It’s Me, in 2003, spending the rest of that decade zeroing in on his sound and performances. The result, an incorporation of the structures of dance music, particularly dubstep, but with a broader (“where’s the drop…”), pop-oriented contour, became the genre of EDM. Since 2009 or 2010, the sound that Kaskade helped develop, alongside his peers like Calvin Harris, David Guetta, Chainsmokers, deadmau5, Avicii and Kygo), has become an indelible piece of the mainstream pie.

“The production this year is unlike anything in my career,” Kaskade concludes. ”I’ve put more of myself into this than any show I’ve ever done. It’s fair to say that this performance is the one I’ve always been building toward.”