Steve Aoki Calgary Concert — Next Date & Ticket Alerts

Steve Aoki in Calgary — FAQ

About Steve Aoki

Steve Aoki was born in Miami in 1977 to Rocky Aoki — the founder of the Benihana restaurant chain — and Chizuru Kobayashi, and grew up in Newport Beach, California after the family relocated west during his childhood. He studied at the University of California, Santa Barbara, earning two degrees in feminist studies and sociology, and started Dim Mak Records in 1996 while still on campus, initially as an outlet for the hardcore and post-punk acts he was booking at student-run shows. Dim Mak's early catalogue covered acts like Bloc Party (whose self-titled US debut Dim Mak released), The Bloody Beetroots, MSTRKRFT, The Kills, Klaxons and the Yeah Yeah Yeahs across multiple formats — releases, US tours and licensing partnerships — and the label became one of the structurally important independents in the LA scene through the 2000s. Aoki himself transitioned from booker and label founder to touring DJ over the course of the mid-2000s as the international festival circuit expanded, and by the late 2000s was a fixed presence on the European and North American festival calendars. His debut studio album Wonderland was released in January 2012 on Dim Mak and Ultra Records and was nominated for the 2013 Grammy for Best Dance/Electronic Album. The Neon Future series that followed defined the next phase of his catalogue: Neon Future I in 2014, Neon Future II in 2015, Neon Future III in 2018 and Neon Future IV: The Color of Noise in 2020, with each instalment leaning further into the collaboration-driven format that has become the signature of his recording output. Across the series Aoki released tracks with will.i.am, Linkin Park (Darker Than Blood, from Neon Future II), Fall Out Boy, Lil Jon, Louis Tomlinson, BTS and a long list of additional vocalists. The 2022 album HiROQUEST: Genesis and its 2023 follow-up HiROQUEST: Double Helix marked a deliberate reset of the recording project around a unified concept and visual world rather than a series of standalone singles, and the cycle has continued to anchor the touring schedule into the mid-2020s. Outside the recording catalogue, Aoki's other long-running activities include the Steve Aoki Charitable Fund (founded in 2012), his ongoing residencies in Las Vegas — which through the 2010s included headline slots at Hakkasan Nightclub, Omnia and other Hakkasan Group venues, with the residency calendar evolving as the Las Vegas Strip's nightclub roster has changed — and a parallel non-fungible-token and Web3 project, A0K1VERSE, that ran through the 2021–2022 NFT cycle. The label remains active, the touring calendar remains dense, and the live show remains structurally tied to the participatory format that has been the most-discussed part of his stage identity since the early Wonderland-era tours.

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