whose Chopper is this Zed's who Zed Zed's Dead baby Zed's [Music] Dead boy oh boy was my face red when I had to inform all my guests that I was all out of gray pong oh hello there didn't see you where's Zed's Dead since you clicked on this video I'm going to assume that you know who Zed's Dead is but if you don't that's okay because by the end of the video you'll be very well informed they've been around for a very long time and they've become a key staple of Bass music while still exploring some other genres as well for the past 14 years they've been shaping the Bass music scene with a very Hands-On approach using a diverse array of music and their influence has been scaled to Greater Heights since the creation of their record label dead beads in this video we're going to unpack the last 15 years of their career so let's take a trip back in time to where it all started Zed's Dead is a Duo that consists of Toronto native Zachary rap Roven also known as Hooks and Dylan mmed also known as DC welcome back to zed BR I'm hooks I'm DC and we're your host Z that the nickname hooks actually comes from Captain Hook hooks made up the name when he was 14 as a play on the hook of a song and fun fact he even dressed up as Captain Hook for Halloween when he was five as for DC his name stands for Dusty crates which refers to digging through records for old samples and rare Tunes hooks has been into to graffiti art for a long time which is actually what led him to crossing paths with DC Hook's cousin who is actually DC's nextdoor neighbor introduced them in 2004 U my cousin was like his neighbor and he's actually like our manager and agent now but um you know we started hanging out like in high school and he made uh beats like a little bit before me and kind of like inspired me to get into it and uh yeah we've just been making music together since like we're like I don't know like over 10 years now we've been more more almost like 12 years I we had a group before Zed's Dead and Zed's Dead's uh I think it'll turn 7 years old this year DC's garage was sort of a neighborhood hangout spot and he wanted to get one of the walls painted and he knew that hooks had started doing graffiti recently so he asked him to paint a mural in the garage while hooks was painting the mural he and DC hit it off and they discovered that they shared a mutual love for hip-hop and they both had actually just begun producing producing music though DC did start just a little bit before hooks in Zed's Dead's Reddit AMA from 2014 DC said that he first experimented with producing music using a PlayStation game called MTV music generator we're secretly replacing DJ scrible equipment with the MTV Music generator let's see if he notices what is this y where's my stuff yep he notices 2 years later in 2006 they decided to join forces branding themselves under the moniker mass production they only ever released one body of work under that name it was an album titled Fresh Beats that they dropped in 2007 it was a sample heavy compilation of hip-hop beats which were mostly influenced by the 9s hip-hop scene it got them a little bit of traction in their local scene in Toronto but not really much outside of that eventually they both began to acquire a taste for dance music which led them to the idea of creating Zed's Dead in 2009 the name references a famous line from the 1994 cult classic movie Pulp Fiction but it also has a little bit of a reference to their initials Z for Zach and D for Dylan so Zack Dylan welcome at Morland Zed's Dead who came up with the name of Zed's Dead is it true that it's from a quote from Pulp Fiction yeah I guess Bruce Willis kind of came up with it yeah it's from Paul Fiction it's not from the initials from your names a little bit of that too bit a bit of V whose motorcycle is this it's a chopper baby whose Chopper is this Zeds who Zed Zed's Dead baby Zed's Dead the same year that they formed Zed's Dead in 2009 they also released their first track is Zed's Dead which was a remix of Pyramid Song by radio head Zed's Dead come on come on come on they remixed quite a bit of rock in the early days such as their remix of Gimme Shelter by The Rolling [Music] stones and a remix of The Pretender by the f fighters get down they also released their first ever original track in 2009 which is called journey of a lifetime and then they actually played their first show at the social in Toronto that summer they were gaining a lot more traction under Zed's Dead than they were under Mass Productions and as they continued to release music they began to build up a fan base on MySpace they also co-founded a weekly party called base mentality in 2009 alongside the kbits base mentality first started out in the basement of a Toronto bar called 751 and it was created with the intent of allowing DJs to play free from the Restriction of concert promoters the event was only held at 7:51 for about a year because the next summer in 2010 they moved the event to Toronto's wrong Bar base mentality existed for 4 years and over that time they hosted major artists like Skrillex Borgore and Nero just to name a few in 2011 zedz Dead released a collab alongside Bas mentality co-founders the killabits and the track was also called Bas mentality one year after starting base mentality they got widespread recognition for Their Eyes on Fire remix which landed on the top iTunes electronic charts and I personally would consider it to be their breakout track scream who's a famous dubstep DJ from the UK was the first major artist to take notice of Eyes on Fire and he played it on his radio show and in his live sets which just added more fuel to the red hot track all of that recognition got them their first official North American tour in 2010 playing over 40 shows in the US and Canada they followed up the next year with the graveyard tour this time playing more than 50 shows in North America to kick off 2012 they released a fourt track EP called adrenaline and then in March of 2012 they made their Mad Decent Jeff debut with the release of their Victor ep the EP featured seven collaborations with Toronto rapper Omar lynx and while the EP is only available on Soundcloud the track no prayers did make its way to Spotify in 2021 just a few months later later they followed up with yet another EP featuring Omar links the Living Dead EP they put out a music video for the title track that had Peter green in it who is the actor who played Zed in Pulp Fiction which was a fun Easter egg referencing the origin of their name they even did a full tour with Omar Lynx after the release of the EP let me you in 2013 they made a return to m decent with their first release of the year the hot sauce EP DC said that the EP received a ton of backlash since it was a different sound than what fans were used to but it just reinforced the fact that Zed's Dead does all types of genres and they're only going to put something out if they feel strongly about it the original artwork for the EP featured a hot sauce bottle that resembled a bottle of Tabasco sauce so much so that they actually received a cease and assist letter from Tabasco so they had to swap out the artwork for something a little more generic by 2014 the Zed's Dead project had been going strong for half a decade and it was finally time for them to release their debut album the eight TR album which was titled somewhere else was released on July 1st and gained instant recognition charting on the billboard 200 the final track on the album features Perry Fel who is the lead singer of Jane's Addiction but you may know him better for his wildly successful Music Festival laap paloa hence the reason for Perry stage being named after after him he's definitely one of the more intriguing artists that Zed's Dead has collaborated with over the years now before the release of the album Zeds Dead intentionally leaked the track lost you through a Craigslist misconnections ad anyone who responded to the ad was sent a short clip of the Lost You music video on July 3rd 2014 Just 2 days after the album release they headlined Red Rocks for their first ever deadrock show Colorado has basically become a second home for them having deadrock shows at rocks every year since with the exception of 2020 their 10th ever dead rocks will take place in the summer of 2024 and they also hold another annual event in Colorado but we'll get to that in a little bit in 2015 they teamed up with billboard to throw their two night stand tour which took a unique approach that not many electronic artists had taken at the time the tour took place only in historically significant venues in major North American cities for two nights each and a portion of the profits went to the Rehab Clinic called recovery unplugged for the tour stop in Austin Texas they put heart rate monitors on four different fans to analyze the results and what they found was a clear rise in heart rates during key moments in their [Music] sets by this point in their career they had already accomplished so much but 2016 was about to be their biggest year yet and that's for two different reasons in March of that year they launched their own record label which I'm sure most of you are already familiar with dead beats the label has grown tremendously since then and has become one of the most coveted Bass music labels in the scene with releases from major artists like subtronics jaws and death packs just to name a few obviously starting dead beats was a major step for them but that wasn't their only highlight of 2016 that year they also released their sophomore album Northern Lights which featured massive collabs with nightmare push a te and Diplo the collab with nightmare which was called front lines was such such a hit that it even got its own Remix album the following year after the release of northern lights they set out on their Northern Lights tour in 2017 they released four singles including Where the Wild Things Are with elenium and lights go down with Jaws four more singles were released the following year in 2018 including collabs with ganja White Knight and snails now eight tracks released over the course of 2 years was relatively low output for the pace that they had been keeping for previous years but they had good reason for it because 2018 was when death PA debuted and surely they were spending a lot of time getting things ready for death packs launch okay I'm just joking but it definitely would be a reasonable explanation since they do have some ties to the project whether or not they're actually death packed if you want to learn more about that I do have a two-part series about death packed on my channel and they're definitely worth checking out if you want to learn more about Zed's Dead's connection to death pact but that's enough about death pact let's get back to Zed dead in 2019 we got five new singles from Zed's Dead including another collab with jaws and collabs with Delta heavy drolo and Dion Timmer as well as a house track with funk and mat that was released on Spin and records that was actually Zed's Dead's second release on spinning as the first one came in 2015 when they collaborated with Oliver heldens on the track you [Music] know on the 4th of July 2020 they debuted their first annual dead beats backyard jambur in Denver which featured performances from various dead beats artists with a whole bunch of other things to do like play Arcade games graffiti mural painting and more they've been doing it every year ever since with the most recent one taking place this past summer like I said before between dead rocks and the backyard jamere Denver has become a second home for the dead beats imprint are live on air yeah just give me the lyrics Let's Get the song going all right I'm Pro dead beats backyard jamere rocking with the dead beats family we got three stages and three Styles three ways for you to get wild of the Dead beats backyard jamere on the dead beat stage we got says truth and blank R shower vampa super rap John sansy all right I lost myself there on a BNB stage we got uh Delta heavy KY can camaran Liquid Smoke Blossom benley and Joe Cruz I don't okay wait back one more time back One More Time come on on the alter State you got merry droppings noises Saki and pacifics y' this is not working let me just get us out there we got three stages we got lawn games food trucks dunk tank bouncy castle Merchant Ark it's our third annual hot dog eating contest biggest one west of the Mississippi we got donut on a Strang eating contest we got a Glam station so you know your boys looking sexy as all hell now can you bring it back so I can get the chorus down we can call a day dead beats backyard jamere you know that's where I want to be with them dead Beach pack your jamere all right enough enough as far as releases for 2020 they collaborated with peekaboo and Rez and in 2021 they collaborated with mkla and nightmare but the biggest part of 2021 came with the release of their newest album catching Z's it stands out among their other work because it's all very relaxing downtempo music so it's definitely not what you would normally see them play at a festival for the album release they launched a new label called Altered States to focus on ethereal downtempo music when they released the album they put out a 38-minute Visual Album experience on their YouTube channel and it's highly worth checking out it's definitely one of the most immersive ways to experience the album in 2021 they also released a 10 track compilation called The Lost Tapes volume 1 here's what Zed's Dead had to say about it we've been in the studio a lot this year and we got the chance to dig through the vaults a bit while working on new music The Lost Tapes is a collection of old school dubs and misplaced IDs that have never been released until now volume one is 10 beats that we made sometime during 2008 and 2009 with future volumes to cover other time periods so far volume 1 is the only version of the Lost Tapes that has been released but I'll definitely be looking forward to hearing the future volumes down the road zedz Dead released more heavyweight singles in 2022 like Gast up with subtronics and Ecstasy of the Soul with Grizz among quite a few others even more hits followed this year in 2023 like criminal with HDI and scared with peekaboo but the most interesting track of 2023 has got to be 139 which was released on AC Slater's night base label and it was Zed Dead's night base debut it's definitely not something that I was expecting but it's also not surprising just given the variety of labels that they've released with over the years I mean variety is basically their entire brand if you think about it a lot of people might classify Zed's Dead as a bass music act and they certainly lean in that direction but they've also shown that they can make just about anything they've been able to express themselves freely without being pigeonholed into a narrow Lane I mean who else has collaborations with Oliver heldens subtronics Perry farel and elenium the answer is nobody and that just shows how artistically unique Zed's Dead really is from their time as mass Productions to the early days of Zed's Dead up until present day their focus has always been about making the music that they want to make and that has paid off tremendously for them whatever the future holds for Zed's Dead we can be sure that it'll be full of surprises Eiffel Tower dildos it was just like the whole Gambit what the hell is an Eiffel Tower dildo nice