Steve Aoki

Mention the name Steve Aoki in a room full of hipsters and you're likely to hear many an unsolicited opinion, varying from heavily praiseworthy to proclaiming the Los Angeles entrepreneur and mogul as a "sell-out." Aoki is a polarizing figure mostly due to his relentless self-promotion. If the name sounds familiar, there's a good chance you're already on Aoki's email blast, which regales you with stories of his DJing alongside Lindsay Lohan or how excited he is for the release of his first CD.

The debut record, strangely titled Pillowface and His Airplane Chronicles, is a hyper-kinetic pseudo-mix—a semi-collaborative effort featuring Aoki's Blackberry address book "guest dropping" over previously released remixes of recent indie-rock tracks originally performed by Bloc Party, Klaxons and Justice. Just to clarify, this means that Aoki's Pillowface boasts the third interpretation of these songs. It's hard to get excited about this prospect, nevermind pay for it. With so many terrific DJs and remixers out there in a prolific and burgeoning electro scene, one has to wonder why there are two contributions each from Justice, MSTRKRFT, Erol Alkan and Weird Science. Wouldn't a DJ eager to impress the haters work hard in showing variety and skill over a span of 17 tracks?

Yet, in spite of its lack of depth, the mix is still somehow really fun in a pompously debauched way. The playboy DJ does inject some originality into the tunes that remixers Soulwax and Erol Alkan expertly tackled a few months prior by integrating contributions from rap newcomer Kid Sister, Canadian electro-provocateur Peaches and lead singer Steve Bays of Hot Hot Heat among others.

If you're looking for skill and imagination, then Pillowface is not your line of cocaine. But if you're looking for mindless fun, or to inspire near-cardiac arrest on the dancefloor, then Steve Aoki is your homeboy.

—Arye Dworken
01.17.08

Hipster DJ-to-the-celebutantes Steve Aoki loves to flaunt all his celebrity friends (i.e. Lindsay Lohan and company) and quasi-celebrity "cool bands" he's down with (Klaxons, Justice). On his first mix album, oddly credited to him as if an artist album, Aoki gets to pull out all the "cool band" stops in his arsenal, both in the mix selections and in the friends he recruits to deliver guest raps atop the music. Lohan's absent, but the likes of Har Mar Superstar, Spank Rock, Amanda Blank, and Hot Hot Heat's Steve Bays show up to drop verbal -- well, something, though it's certainly not science. It appears that the only instruction Aoki gave his pals was to talk dirty. A lot. Using as many expletives as possible. Especially if female. Perhaps that's a smokescreen so that listeners won't notice how mediocre Aoki's mixing skills are -- though one could assume that if you're in Aoki's target demographic, his (lack of) mixing skills won't exactly keep you up at night. If you could get rid of all the "guest drops" here, you'd be left with a half-decent mix disc, albeit a fairly hipster-ly predictable one: not just remixes of Klaxons and Justice (twice), but Bloc Party and Peaches (both co-remixed by Aoki himself under the Weird Science moniker) as well as hot new things such as Does It Offend You, Yeah? and Yelle. The tracks range from pretty damned good (the Soulwax remix of Klaxons' "Gravity's Rainbow") to utter nothingness (Green Velvet's "Shake and Pop" -- remember when he used to make good-to-great house records?), most sadly occupying a middle ground of mediocrity. To put it another way: if you're so inclined (to care about, say, Erol Alkan's rub of Franz Ferdinand), you likely already own the best of these tracks, without the obnoxious rapping atop them. And if you're so inclined to care about Aoki, you likely already own this. The rest of you needn't bother, nor care. ~ Thomas Inskeep, All Music Guide