On Friday, June 19, 2020, Kaskade teamed up with Brazilian EDM brother-duo Chemical Surf to release the second version of their 2017 song “Pow Pow Pow” on Kaskade’s Arkade label. The release is available on all major streaming platforms.

The song’s first version was never released due to the brothers Lucas and Hugo Sanches never feeling satisfied with the song’s instrumentals. During the quarantine they felt they had enough time to put the song together with new drops and updated sounds. So they sent it on to Kaskade who “liked it a lot.”

Chemical Surf’s motto is “R.I.P Genres”, however Spotify classifies the duo as Brazilian EDM with over 1.6 million monthly listeners. They have performed at Rock In Rio, Lollapalooza, Ultra Miami, EDC Las Vegas and Beyond Wonderland. They recently release the album Terremotto on Martin Garrix’s STMPD RCRDS. According to their press release, they also have “collaborations with artists Steve Aoki, Afrojack, and R3HAB on the way.”

In this May 20, 2020 video with Insomniac’s Pasquale Rotella, Kaskade plays parts of “Pow Pow Pow” at 9:30, approximately a month prior to its official release.

The song sounds like a combination of “Mission Impossible”, the “Jaws Main Theme” and “Gangnam Style”. The intro begins with an indefinite pitched wooden block. Later in the intro a trombone synth instrument starts pulsating gradually getting louder accompanied with a riser. The intro turns into a buildup and all of a sudden there is a “Turn that beat up Pow Pow Pow” (pronounced Po Po Po) pre-drop line. That’s when a “Gangnam Style” like groove takes over. There are periodic “Pow Pow Pows” until the trombone-like sounds start up again turning into another buildup that sounds nearly identical to the first buildup. The second drop, also sounds nearly identical to the first drop, with the same sounding “Pow Pow Pows” and the same sounding trombones. Finally, for the outro, there is a slight variation to the rhythm, or more like a few added ghost notes ending in a slight decrescendo while a stand alone kick drum gradually undergoes a high pass filter until all that is left is the high frequencies of a kick drum at the end. It’s a simple song with a catchy groove.

The brothers said “We’ve been fans of Kaskade for a long time. We were very happy when he started playing our songs at his shows, so we reached out to him. He then invited us to do something together. Our connection has been strong since the beginning and the three of us are very pleased with the result. It was such an honor to work with Kaskade. We hope to work with him more often.”

For another recent story about Kaskade, please click here.

Photo credit: Pamela Lin