Nobody Beats The Drum Bring Visual 'Playground' On Tour

EDM trio will bring their 333-inch video installation to Hollywood on Tuesday night.
By Nicholas Philippou

Nobody Beats The Drum
Photo: MTV News

Nobody Beats the Drum are aiming to be what's next in EDM, combining a raw, raging electro sound and stunning visual creations with a revved-up stage show, blasting all your senses.

The DJs in the group are Sjam Sjamsoedin and Jori Collignon, and Rogier van der Zwaag is the visual artist, but all three share the stage and work in unison to create live, fresh, audio-visual sets that really take on a life of their own when you're in the crowd for a live show.

"Every song is accompanied by some [visual] material," van der Zwag told MTV News. "It fits together really well and makes people think. It makes it like a full experience."

"With the live show, we try to make everybody dance and be crazy and have a lot of energy in the shows," Collignon added. "We like to transform the songs for the live sets so we can jam with them and go crazy with all of the effects."

Sjam, Jori and Rogier were Stateside in March, inciting craziness at SXSW before joining EDM's elite in Miami for Ultra Music Festival.

Now they're returning for a North American summer tour, including headlining Steve Aoki's Dim Mak Studios in Hollywood on Tuesday night (May 22). After that, they'll hit the festival circuit to increase their exposure to American fans, including stops at Sasquatch Music Festival in Washington and Governor's Ball in New York, as well as sharing the stage with some of EDM's biggest names like Skrillex, Wolfgang Gartner and Benny Benassi on tour.

NBTD are especially excited about their new creation, a nine-screen video-wall installation designed to enhance their already intense and entrancing visuals for their songs "Purple Cactus," "Grindin' " and their latest, "Blood on My Hands."

"It's a 333-inch TeleNovem Automaton," which Sjamsoedin playfully described as "an invention by us, inspired by Nikola Tesla."

"It's like a playground," van der Zwaag said. "It's a lot of fun to use, and I think the crowd sees that and has a lot of fun watching that."

The new stage was designed to bring fans a new kind of experimental live show, where the DJs can use the screen and get more involved in the visual elements of the show. It also gives van der Zwag even more room for creativity with his animations and music videos and puts him more involved in controlling the visual experience at their shows, the same way the DJ duo control the music.

"The installation gives a lot of room for improvisation and a lot of ways to show visual stuff," van der Zwag said. "Sjam and Jori also have access to it, so they can trigger stuff."

"It's Rogier's little toy," Sjamsoedin added. "It makes us super badass."

For North American tour dates, check out Nobody Beats the Drum's website.

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• Nobody Beats the Drum

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