page_title: Darude
section_title: 2013–15: Touring and Moments
hierarchical_section_title: Darude / Career / 2013–15: Touring and Moments
caption_attribution_description: PerthFMF
context_page_description: Toni-Ville Henrik Virtanen, better known by his stage name Darude, is a Finnish DJ and record producer from Eura, Satakunta. He started making music in 1995 and released the platinum-selling hit single "Sandstorm" in late 1999. His debut studio album, Before the Storm, was released on 18 September 2000 and sold 800,000 copies worldwide, earning Darude three Finnish Grammy Awards. It peaked at number one on Finland's Official List and number 6 on the Billboard Dance/Electronic Albums chart in the United States. Darude's second studio album, Rush, reached number 11 on the Billboard dance chart in 2003 and number 4 on weekly album chart in Finland.
  His third studio album, Label This! was released in 2007. Though it did not chart as high as his previous albums, Gawker praised the album's single "In the Darkness" as "a floating, gossamer piece of trance music... it's tightly composed, easy to dance to, and has a soaring, undeniable hook." In 2011, he co-founded the record label EnMass Music, through which he has released a number of mix compilations related to his radio show Salmiakki Sessions.
context_section_description: Darude continued to tour into 2013, performing that year at the Groove Cruise out of Miami and playing two days of Tomorrowland in July 2014 in Belgium. In March 2015 he performed at Future Music Festival in Australia, playing at all five festival dates in Sydney, Melbourne, Brisbane, Adelaide and Perth, also playing a variety of sideshows at clubs as part of the festival.
  Darude's most recent studio album, Moments, was his first full-length release in eight years. Guest artists included Caater and string band Apocalyptica, among others. The lead single from the album, "Beautiful Alien," had previously charted at No. 1 on the Finnish iTunes charts, with a music video released as well in March 2015. Moments was officially released on August 14, 2015 through Warner Music Finland in Europe and overseas.
  The album blends genres such as electro, progressive house, and We Rave You wrote that "Darude’s ability is once again proven filling the spectrum from big-room to trance to dubstep-infused depth." The album's mixing of genres was generally well-received, and Dancing Astronaut praised the release, writing that "Darude’s return is a clear departure from what once defined him. In Moments, he steps outside the proverbial EDM box by toying around with a multitude of different styles, several of which appear simultaneously in each track." YourEDM opined that the album was "gorgeous," explaining that it "features a wide variety of influences and sounds" with "great production, atmospheres, and melodies riding alongside quaintly catchy vocals."
  Shortly following the album's release in September 2015, Darude embarked on a ten date tour of the United States and Canada, culminating in a performance at the inaugural TwitchCon, a gaming and tech convention organised by video streaming platform Twitch and held in San Francisco on September 25 and 26, 2015. With over 20,000 attendees over the weekend, Darude appeared as the headline DJ at the official afterparty, held in the Bill Graham Civic Auditorium on September 26, 2015, and also featuring a performance from deadmau5. In the run up to the event, Darude appeared as a guest in the deadmau5 Coffee Run series, chatting to the Canadian DJ about various topics while being driven in deadmau5's Lamborghini Huracán supercar. deadmau5 noted that "You [Darude] and a very select few others are responsible for the influx of electronic music into North America. It was "Sandstorm" – I'm totally being serious... that's what all the clubs were hitting on. That's the first time [electronic music] became less 'underground and cool'... there wasn't anything before that".
caption: Darude performing at Future Music Festival in Perth in 2015.
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