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Morning Roundup

Obama loves dubstep, celebrating Whitney's dancefloor contributions, and the cloud-rap phenomenon continues apace

By Ken Taylor
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No joke: To promote last night’s State of the Union address, the White House created a short YouTube clip featuring images of Barack, Hillary, and numerical graphs flowing by to the tune of a pretty bro-y dubstep track. We seriously had to do a double-take (and a double fact-check), so click on through and judge for yourself. (And yes, we know that’s a ghastly photo illustration up top.)

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Power of Ten

Our top 10 favorite live photos of 2012, from Beatport photographer Jordan Loyd

By Ken Taylor
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Beatport staffer and photographer Jordan Loyd hits a fair number of gigs each year, in between his day-to-day office duties, attending college, and shooting for the likes of NBC, The Dew Tour, and plenty of other big outfits. So naturally, since he’s already our go-to guy for shooting our favorite artists (which you’ll often see on our Facebook page), we tapped him for his 10 favorite shots of 2012.

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Cratedigger Essentials

Swedish duo Cazzette reach back into their crates for some old classics

By Christine Kakaire
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You could say that the path for Sebastian Furrer and Alexander Björklund was set once they discovered the sound and scale of main room house. You could also say that it’s in their musical DNA, as their second wave success follows their countrymen Swedish House Mafia and Avicii.

The duo’s project, CAZZETTE, formed officially just one year ago, but their associations are ripped straight from the marquee – their first official release was a remix of Avicii’s “Sweet Dreams”, followed by hyped reworks of SHM and Adele. Since then, when they haven’t been on the road sporting giant cassette tape masks with LED tickers (in tribute to their heroes Daft Punk), they’ve been busy in the studio: their debut DJ mix Strictly CAZZETTE was released this week by Strictly Rhythm, and their studio album Eject pt. I is in the pipeline for November.

Both Avicii and Daft Punk figure in Cazette’s Cratedigger Essentials, which also features Skrillex, Kaskade and Axwell & Dirty South teaming up for a remix.

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Morning Roundup

Burn Studios' Ibiza residency doc continues with Luciano and Guetta, MikeQ brings the ballroom to Europe, Kaskade takes down the press, and more

By Ken Taylor
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So Simon Cowell’s DJ Idol-esque show may be shelved, but the Ibiza-based Burn Studios has got something even more exciting in store in that regard, as we’ve discovered over the last few weeks. Check out the latest installment of the documentary about their residency program, and much more, in today’s news.

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EDC Las Vegas video wrap-up: Afrojack and Steve Aoki B2B, Kaskade, Above & Beyond, and more

By Beatport News Editors

Over the weekend, the 16th edition of the massive Electric Daisy Carnival festival went down in Las Vegas, bringing virtually every superstar name from the world of EDM together for a weekend of dancing, lights, fireworks, and, of course, big tune after big tune. Despite an unfortunate early close to the events on Saturday night due to unsafe weather conditions (the wind was so strong it left some of the speaker set-ups and art installations swaying), EDC redeemed itself with a stellar closing day. In the end, sets from Armin Van Burren, David Guetta, Kaskade, Above & Beyond, Markus Schulz, and a special back-to-back session with Steve Aoki and Afrojack (check the video above), were some of the many special performances this year’s EDC had to offer. Below, we’ve gone ahead and gathered a sampling of video highlights from the weekend.

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