Steve Aoki will sleep when he is dead…

Steve Aoki documentary “I’ll Sleep When I’m Dead”

by Walter Price

If you read these pages on a regular basis you know my thoughts on EDM. Not always flattering thoughts, but I’m starting to think not liking a form of music because of what you perceive it stands for may be a form of sonic racism. Or at least uneducated fear.

This review is more about the human that is Steve Aoki than it is about the music he creates. I’m still not an EDM fan, and most likely never will be. You see, it doesn’t mean something isn’t good just because someone (me) doesn’t feel it.

The Justin Krook directed film I’ll Sleep When I’m Dead follows Aoki as he finishes an album, sets his eyes and sounds on Madison Square Garden but the magic and the human part of the story is Aoki’s love of family. Mainly the his need to prove something to his highly successful and mostly absent father.

At an early age Steve decided to go against the wild playboy lifestyle of his father and go straight.edge punk n roll. Living in a shabby apartment with a few mates and setting out to build a punk club and subsequently a label. It was this punk sensibility the artist combined with the other side of his father, his work ethic,to become the mega-star he is today.

Beautiful enough and not ironic, is the fact that Steve Aoki ultimately ended up more like his father than anyone would have expected. The film not so subtly makes the comparisons clear.

I’ll Sleep When I’m Dead is  not so much an EDM film, but a human journey. Perseverance, honesty,motivation, respect and love. You’ll feel those elements throughout the film but the LA street party near the end solidifies the magic.

“As long as I believe in the music that is coming out of my studio, with the people I’m working with, that’s all that matters.” – Steve Aoki

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