Hot off busy international travels, Rezz is following up her Ultra Japan set with a return to Republic NOLA Thursday night. This will be Rezz's first performance on the next stretch of her highly-anticipated Mass Manipulation World Tour, and awaiting the 22-year-old, fan-dubbed "Space Mom" is sure to be an amped-up crowd complete with fans old and new. And New Orleans fans have been anxiously awaiting Space Mom's next landing since her festival and after-party appearances during BUKU Music + Arts Project this past March.
Ukrainian-born, Canadian-bred DJ/producer Isabelle Rezazadeh performs under the stage name Rezz, stylized as RΞZZ, and can be easily spotted at venues and festivals thanks to the swirly LED goggles she wears onstage. Her signature eyewear and psychedelic, sci-fi-inspired artwork confirm the central and vital roles visuals play during Rezz's performances. And she's already dropped hints about her tour visuals via Twitter:
"These new visuals on my tour r gonna fk ur life up for a bit … My fav kind of visuals ever. Bold. Hypnotic. Strange. In your face. Psychedelic. [sic]"
Rezz fans would expect nothing less.
As alien lore tells it, Rezz began DJing at age 16 and later found inspiration to start producing her own music after attending a live deadmau5 show. Rezz's early music soon caught the eye of Skrillex, who found her on a blog and signed her to his label OWSLA. In 2015, she released her debut EP Insurrection (2015) with OWSLA, but it wasn't long before deadmau5 himself scooped the fiery, sushi-loving young talent for his own record label, mau5trap, later that year.
Her next EP, The Silence Is Deafening (2016), includes "Edge," arguably her most well-known song to date and her most-listened-to track, streamed more than 1.3 million times on Spotify. The track helped to establish on a larger stage the dark and gritty bass-driven weirdness that would forever be associated with Rezz's distinct sound. Later that year, she dropped another six tracks with her EP Something Wrong Here (2016), including the single "Purple Gusher," followed by a handful of standalone singles like "Alien," "Fourth Impact" and "I" heading into spring 2017.
In early July, Rezz dropped "Relax," the first ultra-hypnotic track off what would eventually be her debut full-length album, Mass Manipulation (2017). Rezz released the full album in August, but not before teasing her die-hard fans with not one but three more single releases: "Diluted Brains," "Premonition," and "DRUGS!" These teasers only served to intensify the Space Mom fever in those final tantalizing weeks.
Mass Manipulation is one of those albums I remember exactly where I was the first time I heard it—and Space Mom did not disappoint. Per usual, her music is unabashedly self-aware—once you've heard a few Rezz songs, you can often pick out one of her tracks after just a few downbeats. But while her recognizable sound does come through in every track she touches, Rezz still has the uncanny ability to avoid one-note tendencies. Every track is unique and distinct from one another, but also distinctly Rezz all at the same time.
Rezz continues to be unapologetically herself, which, besides the music, is arguably her fans' most beloved characteristic about her. For her devoted coterie of superfans, Rezz isn't just a musician—she's an alien-human hybrid sent to Earth to save us from ourselves through dark, transportive tunes. And in a late-August tweet, she confirmed her continuation on this musical path, writing about plans for the direction of her music to come: "Pleasing old fans while gaining new audiences, And most importantly satisfying my own taste."
And in true Space Mom fashion, Rezz unveiled one last parting gift to her loyal Rezzbians (also collectively known as the "The Cult of Rezz" on her official Facebook fan page) just two days before embarking on the North American stretch of her tour. Calling it "one of my most proud of collaborative artistic projects (relative to mass manipulation of course [sic])," Rezz announced she had created a Mass Manipulation comic book in collaboration with Luis Colindres, also the album's art creator. Fans can preorder one of the 2,000 limited copies of the 60-page Mass Manipulation comic book here.
Don't miss the opportunity to blast into outer space when Rezz takes the stage for her Mass Manipulation World Tour at Republic NOLA this Thursday, along with opening acts No Mana and KTRL. Doors open at 9 p.m., and tickets are still available here.
Winter Circle Productions began in 2009 as an independent promotion and production house to attract music that its founders felt was missing from a post-Katrina New Orleans. Creator of Buku Music + Art Project and two-time recipient of the Offbeat Best Promoter Award, WCP is now positioned as one of the most trusted tastemakers on the Gulf Coast, having produced hundreds of shows across many musical genres in dozens of venues. In July 2015, after six years at the indie grind, WCP was happy to find a home at AEG Live where it now runs its Gulf Coast regional office. Specializing in the unique and progressive, WCP strives to bring new ideas and concepts to the table and reward attendees with unforgettable experiences and long-lasting impressions.
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Founded in 2010 by Winter Circle Productions right before the American dubstep wave, BASSIK was the first monthly event in the Gulf Coast region to build a brand around underground bass culture. Since then, BASSIK has expanded to include other sub-genres of EDM and maintains its reputation for a high level of production and top notch international talent
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