Dada Life

Named after the absurdist art movement, Swedish electro duo Dada Life found fame after injecting their giant, floor-throbbing beats and squealing synth hooks with mass amounts of silliness, inflatable bananas and the occasional record breaking pillow fight. Stefan Engblom originally released his first single when he was just 16 and slogged away under the name Phasio for years before releasing his debut album 'Just One More Day' in 2001; while Olle Corneer started making electro-punk music as a child and was influenced by the avant-garde compositions of Philip Glass. The pair met randomly at Disneyland after they overheard each other speaking Swedish in the queue and, after returning home to Stockholm, they joined up to create their first single 'Big Time' in 2006. With the mantra of 'No Frills, Just Fun' and the goal of making their sets feel like "a kids party for adults", they built up a reputation for wild, swaggering, EDM bangers on early singles 'The Great Fashionista Swindle' and 'This Machine Kills Breakfasts' and remixed tracks for Martin Solveig, Duck Sauce and Kylie Minogue. They released their debut album 'Just Do the Dada' in 2009 and headed out on their first big tour opening for Tiësto and gradually became a hugely popular, high energy party act. In typically crazed style, they broke the Guinness World Record for the biggest ever pillow fight at a gig in Chicago in 2013 and, with the release of second album 'The Rules of Dada', they also created their own fantasy Dada Nation with passports for their fans. Bananas and Champagne also became a conspicuous part of their show with fans turning up with inflatables and wearing banana costumes, and they ended up breaking another World Record for the largest gathering of people dressed as fruit at a show in California. They also launched a plug-in programme called the Sausage Fattener which imitates their greasy synth sound. In 2013 Corneer was diagnosed with cancer and although he recovered, it caused him to stop touring when he launched the experimental 'sound art' project Night Gestalt. Other big crowd-pleasing tracks included 'Born to Rage' featuring metal wailer Sebastian Bach and strutting, gonzoid dance anthem 'Feed the Dada', and the duo released third album 'Our Nation' in 2018 with soul singer Anthony Mills guesting on the single 'Sunday F**k You Too'.

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