In April, I attended my first Coachella, and I knew immediately that I could not miss Subtronics’ Sunday evening set. From start to finish, the energy was electric, the production was world-class, and the performance pushed the crowd into absolute mania.
Nearly 100,000 fans flocked to the iconic Sahara Tent to witness the spectacle. That massive draw is exactly why I jumped at the opportunity to sit down with him for an interview. Offstage, Jesse Kardon’s genuine humility and authenticity make him incredibly easy to connect with. Despite his status as one of dubstep’s reigning titans, he remains completely grounded. Months later, here is a look behind the curtain at what it truly takes to be the legendary Subtronics.
Hit Parader: How would you describe your sound to someone who’s never heard your music?
Subtronics: When I first started pushing myself as an artist out into the world, I would always say it’s angry robot noise, but it really has evolved quite a bit, and I don’t know if that tagline is still necessarily accurate. My whole life I’ve always loved sad indie alternative, Radiohead’s my all-time number one. And I always loved experimental music. That’s bordering into electronic, but I didn’t even know it was electronic at the time. So, I would describe my sound as a, I guess alternative bass. It’s so hard to pinpoint because I do so many different things. The scope of genre has gotten so incredibly wide. The core fan base knows me for heavy, aggressive underground dubstep, with an emphasis on it being funky and groovy a bit. But more recently it’s gotten more melodic and almost Journey-esque. I’m trying to facilitate an audio-visual roller coaster that just triggers an emotional response, but also a brain explosion response. It’s hard to describe. But I would just say dubstep-based music, alternative, sometimes sad, sometimes heavy.
HP: You played to nearly 80,000 people at Coachella, how do you feel reaching almost that mainstream level? I really feel you brought dubstep back to the forefront, similar to a Skrillex. How does that feel to you?
Subtronics: It is a full circle childhood dream, especially, the fact that you specifically named Skrillex. It’s near spooky for me because I remember when I had been dabbling with making electronic music here and there in high school, it was hard. I never got good at it. Then, long story short, I was sent to rehab for weed. After that, I was in a halfway house in New Haven, just getting my laptop after a blackout period. I really decided then and there because, I wasn’t going to college, I was just in AA all the time, and that was when I started. I remember sitting in a transport van leaving the halfway house going to an AA meeting thinking, “I want to be Skrillex.” Skrillex was the guy I worshiped; he was my God. I have a theory where as far as the human psyche goes, music fulfills a lot of the same things that religion does. A lot of people dedicate their lives to music in a very similar way that people dedicate their lives to religion. I really do believe I’ve dedicated my life to bass music in a near religious-esque sense. Skrillex was literally my Jesus, full on for two years. When I thought, “I’m just going all the way in,” the thought process was, what if one day I could be a Skrillex type character? Now, it is the most unbelievably surreal, insane, impossible to wrap my head around thing ever. It’s not something I ever expected, especially because it’s taken me, I think, arguably a very long time. I had just about no following at all for at least five or six years. Things grew very, very slowly and there was an exponential explosiveness towards the end. I think that’s made me grateful and have a sense of scale for the gravity of how lucky I am. It’s insane, it’s really full circle and my inner child is screaming and melting down. It’s just crazy. It’s really just crazy.
HP: What does it mean for you and your wife collaborating and then being able to bring her out for your Coachella set?
Subtronics: It’s easy. And it feels like a weird life hack because a common issue in relationships is when you have a really demanding career where work-life balance is really challenging. But if anyone’s going to be understanding of the schedule of a musician, it’s going to be someone else who has that same job. Also, we spend every waking moment together, and when we met, we were already so similar. When we’re collaborating, we can communicate almost telepathically. Far better than either of us would be able to communicate with anyone else. We have that kind of metaphysical connection with each other. We play this game where we just go, “One, two, three, go,” and say a random number. And every now and then we’ll say the same number, that’s the goal obviously. Every now and then, we’ll notice we’ll be super on the same page in some form or another in whatever the situation is. And we’ll be like, oh my God, try it. Okay, “One, two, three, 72!” We’ll both say 72 and we’re like, “Oh my God, we’re locked in right now.” Stylistically, we do similar things as far as DJ workflow goes. We are known to pick a popular song and then edit it into one of our own songs, and then do all our double drops and our triple drops and are using all four-deck blending, doing it all live. It’s a very busy, technical, demanding DJ kind of workflow and we both do it. So, it’s very comfortable for both of us. Many times, when we go into back to backs, we’ll be going in with an artist that is not used to doing that. It’s a little bit more of a jarring experience. For all those reasons, it’s just so easy and it really feels a life hack.
HP: I wanted to ask about your festival Cyclops Cove. What was it like planning that? Do you plan to continue it in the future and how do you plan to grow it if you do?
Subtronics: It’s an interesting thing we’re doing because planning and throwing a festival, having that attention to detail that makes a festival good requires so much time and effort and so many people and it requires a lot of planning. We stagger it to be every other year, and this year is one of the years we’re doing it. It’s my favorite thing ever because we keep it to a manageable medium size. It’s not something that is this tremendously ambitious undertaking of logistics and 1000 moving parts and investing all our life savings. It’s a comfortable size that we know with our experience we can execute well. It’s a nice enough size where it’s comfortable for all the patrons; it’s not crazy lines and insane bathroom situations. It’s easy to manage, so it’s nice and it’s almost got a laid-back energy and vibe going on, I really love it. It’s a challenge to plan as far as talent, booking out all the talent, just because you must be wary of all the other massive events that are going on regionally. We almost are only able to pull it off every other year because it would be challenging radius wise. What’s funny is a lot of the big stuff when we’re there, we’re all stressed out. When we were at Coachella, we were all a mess, we were all an anxious mess. But just to speak for myself, whenever I’m on site at Cyclops Cove, it’s a chill vibe. That’s my favorite thing about it. It’s also not our only heavily curated multi-day event. We had Grizztronics at the Gorge this past year, which obviously had its bumps in the road, but we learned a lot and we’re really excited about what could be in the future for that. We have other festivals, we’ve had Cyclops Desert, Cyclops Island. We always do a whole big hullabaloo in Denver. I’ve been really enjoying dipping my toes and slowly scaling up all our curated events as we gain experience. I don’t like jumping into the deep end. I’m a get into the pool gradually kind of guy. And things have just been slowly getting better and bigger. So, I’m very excited about that.
HP: Obviously, this is very demanding, and you want to do it forever, you said, but when you’re not touring, what helps you recharge or what in your day-to-day life helps you reset just in general and creatively?
Subtronics: It’s the little moments. It’s funny, because I describe it all the time. I have two jobs. I have my job as a DJ, which requires a lot of time at home prepping sets and then obviously touring and traveling constantly. Then the other job as a music producer. Ironically enough, I’ll get home and my agent’s like, “You have two weeks off, aren’t you excited?” And I’m like, “Yeah, at this job, but I’m way behind at my other job!” I get home and I have three songs to finish, and I have this deadline, and this demo needs to get to this person, and I need to respond to this person on this collab because they sent the stems back over, etc. I find life balance in the little moments. It’s when we wake up, and we make breakfast together most days and walk the dogs together. We try and go to movies and go out to eat or we’ll jump in the pool every now and then. Moments where I could hopefully spend time with Sonia because we’re both touring and traveling all the time. Thankfully, when we tour internationally, if there’s no shows on either end of that, we’ll use it as an excuse of, “Well, we’re already in Southeast Asia. Let’s just go to Kosamui for a day or two.” I think our dogs really do help. What’s so funny is they said when I was in AA, “Get a dog because it adds structure to your life. It adds responsibility to your life.” I think they function for us the same way now, if it wasn’t for those dogs, I’d never see the sun, but they need a walk. It’s good we get our exercise, even if it’s five minutes stepping away from the computer. That’s five minutes you’re not sitting at the desk.
HP: Do you have any big hobbies or interests that you’re passionate about outside of music?
Subtronics: Yes, we love raising our dogs. We’ve been getting more and more into cooking. I have fallen back into skateboarding recently. I love playing kendama, which is it’s a skill hand ball and cup-esque toy, but there’s thousands of tricks and gets crazy. Spinning poi, which is kind of kendama. It’s a flow art where there’s thousands of different maneuvers and it’s creative and expressive and is a real meditative kind of thing. I try to stay on top of working out here and there. I’ve been way more in routine with it than I am currently, but I try and have that as a part of the routine. And I think too much doom scrolling, truly. I spend a ridiculous amount of time doom scrolling. Then on airplanes, I play a lot of video games. I play handheld skateboarding simulator games and old arcade games.
HP: Do you have a favorite fan interaction or story?
Subtronics: Yes, I was all the way back in front of house at Lost Lands and someone was like, “I want to give you this joint.” I was already unbelievably stoned and had too many joints to begin with. As soon as he handed it to me, my group was leaving and they said, “Jesse, we’re going, come on.” I didn’t have time to put it away or do anything with it. We’re just walking down the center lane of Lost Lands, that media pit area and I don’t really know what to do with this joint in my hands. I have the thought, “Oh, it’d be nice to give a fan this joint because whenever you walk down that center lane, fans notice, and they all start freaking out.” I turn around and I just toss the joint up high in hopes that someone magically catches it. Then I see this kid who I know, his name is Wilson. He has been front and center at every single one of my major careers shows literally for the past five years. Anytime we’re in a big venue and it’s a big headline show, he is literally dead front and center, every night of the show. I throw the joint, see where it’s going to land, look down. “Oh my God, it’s Wilson of all people standing right here, super ultra mega fan. I know this kid.” He looks around, his hand is out and the joint magically lands into his hand, insane toss. Just that alone is crazy that it lands in his hand. He’s not paying attention, looks around, sees that the heavens just dropped weed into his hand from the sky. His face is complete bewilderment because he’s like, “Did I manifest this? How did I just get a free joint from thin air?” He’s looking around and then he sees that it was me of all people who threw it. So, I just watched his brain explode in slow motion. My mind was blown too, because I got to witness all this happening in slow motion. I’ll never forget, it was crazy.
HP: What can fans expect from you coming up in the future, festival-wise, music-wise? What are you putting out? What are your plans for the next three to six months?
Subtronics: Next three to six months are a lot of festivals, the Wynn residency, a lot of songwriting and a lot of song finishing, a steady stream of the unreleased songs that everyone has been asking me for. Then the 18 months scope, we have some ambitious things that we are starting to get our ducks in a row for. A few different extremely ambitious things throughout 2028. No signs of slowing down anytime soon.
HP: I have one last question. Obviously, you traveled around the world, toured, played for all different countries. Where would you say your absolute favorite place to play was?
Subtronics: Man, Japan comes to mind first. Small clubs in Japan have just the most unbelievably high energy crowds that are the most open-minded. The scene for underground dubstep in Budapest is something that is special and I’ve never seen such a small tight-knit community that is so passionate for such a niche thing. It’s really special and cool. Anywhere in Europe, they’re going crazy for bass music and heavy bass music. But then, I just discovered that Guatemala is one of the craziest crowds I’ve ever played for in my life. And I’d be remiss not to at least mention Denver, Montreal, Pacific Northwest as a whole, and South Florida are all major bass music strongholds.
Catch Subtronics on tour here.
