Music

DJ duo Disclosure were caught miming a performance at Wembley Stadium, because their equipment was unplugged

by Aaron Zorgel

photo via Facebook

Remember when deadmau5 called out the superstar DJs in the EDM world who just “push play”? Well, at an appearance at Capital FM’s Summer Ball this weekend, Disclosure didn’t even do that.

A picture of the UK-based Lawrence brothers with their decks clearly unplugged made its rounds on the Internet shortly after the performance, and popular EDM Facebook group I Love Bass Music posted the photo, accusing Disclosure of “pulling a David Guetta.” The duo fiddled with the unplugged mixer during the performance, but aren’t wearing headphones, and the power cable for their setup is dangling off of the table, clearly not plugged in to any sort of electrical outlet.

Disclosure addressed the controversy on I Love Bass Music, revealing that the performance was the result of an ongoing dispute with Capital FM. They wanted to perform live, or at least mix, but Capital insisted that the vocalist perform to a backing track that the radio station’s tech team would trigger, so it would sync to a visual component of the performance. Guy Lawrence’s statement on the whole ordeal is as follows:

“Hello I Love Bass Music and everyone who is talking about this photo… so. here is how and why this happened. Capital FM made us do this show with a backing track playing but allowed the vocalists to sing. They said that they had to trigger the tracks themselves to sync visuals. We pleaded with them for weeks and weeks to let us play fully live or at least let us mix but they just weren’t having it. You will also notice this was the same for a lot of the dance acts playing that day (i.e. the duke dumont pic you posted)

It was incredibly frustrating and horrible for us to hear our music at Wembley and not actually be able to play it ourselves, as anyone with any knowledge about disclosure knows that we play fully live seen here… http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=THeSe3XqObQ AND can mix…http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mTAhk7FXb-I

Notice also that we didnt try and make it look like we were mixing. We left the fucking plug on the floor on purpose, didnt even plug phono leads into the master out, turned all the EQs fully down and the master out AND DIDNT EVEN TAKE HEADPHONES for god sake!! LOL if at any point we touched the mixer it was…well, you try standing infront of 80,000 people and not touching the mixer… go on… its really hard hahaha!

I would also like to point out that people like David Guetta ect who have also been accused of pretending to mix, actually try and cover it up and pretend to blend tracks into one another and hide it… but with us, we played three songs with vocalists b2b with gaps in between, so even if we had been mixing, there would have been no beat matching involved anyway + we didnt try and hide it at all!!

But yeah it was a very strange experience and one we will not be going through again. Capital have been amazing to us and they play our songs roughly 400 times a week across their various networks and we wanted to thank them for all the support.

Guy x”

Obviously, this is one of the challenges of making an EDM show engaging. When so much of the live experience is dependent on visuals, DJs are forced to pre-record their sets so a visual effects team can synchronize a visual component. It’s no secret that David Guetta has been caught miming his performances in the past, and Justice caught a lot heat for this photo which shows them manipulating a piece of USB-powered hardware that isn’t even plugged in.

The real shame here is that Disclosure’s live show is typically very performance heavy. Check out a video of the duo teaming up with Eliza Doolittle at BBC’s Live Lounge, where they incorporate live drum triggers, bass guitar, and synths into their performance. Disclosure’s debut album Settle currently sits at #1 on the UK Album Charts.