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In 2000, Raddon moved to San Francisco with naomi, a fellow snowboarder whom he'd met at college and later married. Techno and its sibling electronic styles were once again losing ground to rock, as acts like The Strokes and The White Stripes were showered with attention. "I think the reason it didn't really stick back then is because the sound and the art hadn't really incubated," says Raddon. "It wasn't totally ready." Seeking out local pockets where interest in deep house reigned, Raddon worked in record stores and as an A&R rep for a label, all the while experimenting with and releasing his own music. Instead of relying on samples, he created elaborate soundscapes—dreamy, seductive beats amplified by vocals from friends, cousins of friends, and basically anyone who was willing. "My career really mirrors what's been happening with electronic music in general," says Raddon. "As it's gotten bigger, I rose with it." The first major turning point was the Electric Daisy Carnival in 2009, when about twice the number of expected attendees showed up for the LA festival. "I'm up there playing my music, something I wrote sitting in a basement three years ago, broke, eating Top Ramen, and 90,000 people are singing along with me on the chorus," remembers Raddon. "Like, this has finally matured so that it's more than just city kids. The bridge-and-tunnel kids found out about this. It was extremely exhilarating." Around the same time, the Wynn approached him about playing a couple of summer dates at its newly opened clubs. Raddon had another idea: He wanted to import from Ibiza the idea of the DJ residency. (Up until that point, residencies were reserved for more mainstream pop acts, anyone from Mariah Carey to Rod Stewart.) So he and Sean Christie, a managing partner at the hotel's Encore Beach Club, sat at the back of an on-site café coming up with plans. "We were fully throwing it against the wall [asking], 'Is this going to work?'" says Raddon. "And we were kind of rubbing our hands like, 'Yeah, I think people are ready to hear electronic music in Vegas.'" On Memorial Day 2010, Raddon made his way—not as stealthily as he did tonight—through a crowd of 5,000 people to an unassuming booth in the middle of the crowd for the first of many times that summer. Thousands more lined up to get in. "That will forever go down in my mind as, okay, my life's different. Everything's changed from this moment on," he says. What started as an off-the-cuff pitch soon turned into a cottage industry: Today most of the best-known names in the business have Vegas residencies, from Skrillex and Diplo to Avicii and David Guetta. Reputable sources estimate some of them command salaries of at least $250,000—per gig. Rival hotels constantly try to "Standing in front of the massive crowd [at Lollapalooza] with the Chicago skyline behind me is seared into my brain." poach talent to keep up with the craze. "There's a competitive nature there because we're trying to differentiate ourselves," Raddon adds. Kaskade brief ly defected to another hotel before returning to the Wynn, but as if to mark his triumphant homecoming, the XS club recently finished a $10 million renovation to create a more immersive experience. Tonight, confetti still pours regularly from the ceiling, but in addition, a giant LED screen projects colorful, mesmerizing images of celestial orbits and f locks of birds from behind the booth while a massive pyrotechnic system fires f lames from the rafters timed to every drop (the part of the song where the DJ drops the bass back into the track and the crowd goes absolutely wild, the vibrations rattling their tonsils). Raddon says it's one of his favorite moments of any set, which can last anywhere from two to four hours. "Ten years ago, you lit a sparkler at a club, and people were ripping their faces off," says Raddon, as he exits the booth at 4 am. I wonder if the vastness of this spectacle helps eradicate the need for additional recreational enhance- ments? He responds, "It works for me—and I'm drinking a Fiji water." The superstar DJ's schedule doesn't leave him with as much time as he'd like to visit his hometown, but Gramophone, along with Lake Michigan and Chicago-style hot dogs, is on his to-do list every time he does. ("I'm not that discerning, I just want a good hot dog," he says. "I don't get that in LA.") Festival season does usually bring him home—tonight he is fresh from his stint at Lollapalooza. "Standing in front of the massive crowd [on Perry's Stage] with the Chicago skyline behind me is seared into my brain," he says. "I also won't forget pissing off Paul McCartney with the 'noise' that I was making. That made the punk inside of me grin from ear to ear." MA Revving up the crowd at Lollapalooza in July. photography by getty images (LoLLapaLooza)