Laidback Luke

Though Laidback Luke’s name suggests an almost zen state of chill, his sound is anything but: The Dutch DJ/producer is the mastermind behind some of EDM’s most boisterous crowd-pleasers. Lucas Cornelis van Scheppingen was born in Manila, the Philippines, in 1976, to a Dutch father and a Filipina mother, and moved as a child to the northern Dutch town of Hoofddorp. He began making tracks after discovering club music at a school dance, and by the mid-’90s, he was putting out singles influenced by Chicago house’s hard-charging drum programming. But Luke’s main contributions to dance music were a function of his crossover sensibilities. In the late 2000s, his progressive-house collaborations with artists like Swedish House Mafia’s Steve Angello and Sebastian Ingrosso helped set the stage for EDM’s worldwide explosion; cuts with Steve Aoki and Diplo pushed into even ravier territory, while his Mixmash label put out more pop-friendly acts like Martin Solveig. A regular fixture on the festival circuit’s biggest stages, Laidback Luke remains one of the dance scene’s most versatile players, capable of effortlessly switching between big-room bangers, pop-dance ballads, and old-school floor-fillers.