When Wolfgang Gartner hit Twitter to rant about “lazy ass” DJs who get their set lists from Beatport’s top 10, he didn’t name names. But Gartner was venting frustration with a fellow performer’s set at last weekend’s Neon Desert Music Festival in El Paso, Texas, and Martin Solveig just happened to be playing about the same time.
The festival’s headliner, Solveig (and the Internet, for that matter), did some quick detective work and figured out he was the target. Rather than take the insults, the French producer snapped back with his own Twitter response. So when MTV News caught up with Solveig on Thursday, we had to ask him about the online feud. What’s he gonna do the next time he and Gartner wind up on the same lineup?
“Meet up and kick his ass,” Solveig laughed. In all seriousness, though, the producer said the topic was an important discussion to have but that he just “didn’t like the idea of being called out without being mentioned [by name].” He added, “There’s a lot to say about this, and this is where Twitter sometimes gets frustrating because 140 characters is too short to really be able to explain this. But that’s the only thing I didn’t like; the point is interesting and taken.”
“I play the same gigs, get the same money, same slots, and I don’t play any of those tracks,” Gartner wrote last week. In response Solveig explained via tweet that he was first and foremost “a crowd-pleaser” who tries to deliver for fans that come to party and celebrate. He deliberately chooses to leave “leave experimentation to real underground acts.”
“On that specific show, I was the headliner, the main act, the closing act. I was playing solo at the time of the festival — the only stage open — and I was like the ambassador of that music,” the “Smash” producer told MTV News of the mixed crowd.
Major festivals like Ultra, Tomorrowland and Coachella cater to “a different crowd and a different story,” Solveig argued. At those places, he feels freer to push the envelope. The “Hey Now” producer explained that EDM has to keep evolving but there’s a right and wrong place to expose new sounds.
Still, there’s a lot of truth in what Gartner said, Solveig agreed. “Not about the laziness, though — that’s very, very wrong,” he countered. “Someone who calls me lazy doesn’t know anything about me, that’s for sure.”
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