The best acts to see at Electric Zoo Festival 2015

Elder ’90s statesmen Tom Rowlands & Ed Simons just dropped Born in the Echoes, their eighth studio album, and first in five years. It’s filled with all the classic Chems’ hallmarks: bangers (“Just Bang”), pretty psychedelics (“Radiate”) and collabos with their cohorts (St. Vincent, Beck and Q-Tip (who sounds a bit tired and old on “Go”). They set the gold-standard template that basically all live acts use today and still know how to put on a proper audio-visual extravaganza, even though Simons is staying in England this go-round. 

The deep Dane released his techno-opus 1977 on Michael Mayer’s Kompakt Records in 2013 with hard-edged acid like “Opa” and the more-romantic-but-still-highly-danceable “Der Alte.” He is an anomaly in the world of dance music: an old-school techno producer who spins with underground legends like Ricardo Villalobos and Sven Väth and has also collaborated with overground pop stars like Nicki Minaj and Shakira, making him the perfect Zoo artist, appealing to the lifers and day-glo teens alike.

Ranging from dusky dubs to crackly driving house revisions, Henrik Schwarz makes a mean remix—but don't let it overshadow his original tracks. With side stints fronting an electro jazz trio and working with the Berlin State Ballet, the versatile deep house master combines an eclectic mix of musical sensibilities into distinctively haunting, elegant club tracks. He even released a record of experimental classical arrangements recently. But regardless of what source material or genres he's working with, one thing's sure: Schwarz spins a killer set.

The combination of bearded bear VonStroke and the flamboyant green-tuft of Green Velvet seems odd at first, but the pair's shared Midwestern roots and longtime immersion in the worlds of techno and house make them perfect bedfellows. What started as one-off back-to-back sets has grown into a true collaboration—but only for their “special occasion” sets.

Though Com Truise stays pared down for his live sets (an APC Ableton controller, one keyboard and a live drummer), the analog-gear aficionado boasts a vast array of vintage drum machines and synths in the studio. With the elaborate production setup, he's somewhat of a sound sculptor, forming chrome-plated computer compositions that sit at a groovy neon middle-space between ’80s Mac commercial music and electrofunk.

Their superb recent Essential Mix was filled with dubbed out hip-hop and funk samples from the likes of Dr. Dre, Herbie Hancock, James Brown, Wu-Tang Clan, P-Funk All-Stars and even Velvet Underground mashed in with catchy house tracks and their own edits. 

Daley Padley’s professional music career started at an after-party in Ibiza in 2010. When the music unexpectedly cut out, he graciously volunteered his phone to take over and when one of his work-in-progress tracks came on, the crowd went nuts. He emailed them to his producer friend Noir, who released them on his label the next year. Since then, his heavy old-school house sound has found favor on remixes for Green Velvet’s “Bigger Than Prince” and on Pete Tong’s Essential Mix.