Gordo Talks India Memories, New Music and Eight-Hour Sets

It’s a sunny day in New York City as producer-DJ Gordo is seated outdoors at a restaurant and getting sushi. “I’m just living good,” Gordo aka Diamanté Anthony Blackmon (fka Carnage) says as he beams a smile over a video call. “I’m gonna go get a haircut.”

It was just a week prior to our chat that Gordo was at Tomorrowland, playing an hour-long set that was one for the books, especially because he brought on Latin star Maluma and premiered their then-unreleased song “Parcera.” Tomorrowland remains one of the most attended festivals in the world, so it’s a sea of people just vibing to Gordo and Maluma gathering their energies. Gordo says he can always the gauge the audience, though. “I’ve been doing this for a long time. It’s hard sometimes because you want to please as many people as possible… it’s not easy as it seems. But I think just trusting your gut and doing that stuff is just easiest to do,” he adds.

Over the last decade, Gordo’s previous moniker Carnage began making waves just as EDM was taking over the world. His releasees were supported by Ultra Music, who continue to put out even his latest singles like the techno-informed “With You” featuring electronic duo Adriatique. There have been many more acclaimed releases along the way, including producing songs from Drake’s 2022 album Honestly, Nevermind like “Sticky,” “Currents,” “Massive,” “Calling My Name” and “Tie That Binds.” It’s that kind of appearance that drew the attention of the likes of Maluma to work with Gordo. They got to work in October last year, building on both artists’ influence in the Latin music space.

The way Gordo sees it, “every place, every country, every culture has their Drake” and their own “kings and queens” in music. They could be Latin and ruling the American airwaves but the artist brings the point closer to India, mentioning Sidhu Moose Wala and DIVINE. “It’s so amazing to see Vivian [DIVINE] shine in India right now,” he says. The DJ-producer goes on to namecheck artists like Peso Pluma and Santa Fe Klan, among others being big in North and South America.

The world over, Latin music has been branching off and the movement is not without appropriators, but Gordo doesn’t necessarily see it as a problem. “America is one of those places where they’ve always taken from so many little different cultures and made it their own. Some of the biggest guys playing Latin house music are white kids. Look at [artist] Hugel, a French guy making Latin house.” He adds, “Some people would get upset and some people would just look at it like, ‘Okay, well, they’re expanding the sound, expanding the audience, and making more people fall in love with our sound.’”

The talk comes around to matters of acceptance, whether it’s people accepting newer voices in music and not “feeling insecure” to Gordo’s own journey in the music world, moving away from the Carnage moniker. “It just matters where we’re loved, and being grateful where we’re accepted already. I don’t think a lot of people can deal with being rejected so many times. It doesn’t stop me from keep going at it. If you’d ask a girl out on a date, and she says no, does that mean you’re gonna stop asking girls out on dates?” he says and bursts into a laugh.

One of Gordo’s wildest ideas, undoubtedly his USP when it comes to being accepted as DJ-producer across the world, are his eight-hour sets. He’s quick to point out how psytrance artists like Goa Gill have been doing it forever and expresses surprise when told he’s not from the subcontinent. “I thought he was just like some like legendary guy who lives, like, in the middle of Bangladesh somewhere and just lives on a Goa beach in the summer and takes LSD every day for breakfast. I don’t know,” he says.

Gordo’s own approach is to just download a bunch of music and take the stage. What’s running through his mind during an eight-hour set? Just typical Gordo thoughts. “How many girls are on stage? What drinks do we have on stage to get out to the girls? If there’s any towels nearby?” the artist says and then pauses for a while. He adds, “How many more girls can we fit on the stage? That’s pretty much it.” The sets are one of his biggest draws, as are Gordo’s Taraka series of shows across the world. Interestingly, Taraka has several meanings in Sanskrit.

The artist then begins talking about India. “I think it’s going back into that zone where India will have that explosion like it did in 2014-16 with EDM. I hope I’m invited to that explosion,” he says. From playing Sunburn tour shows as Carnage and the one time his show in Pune was moved indoors due to “political stuff.” He adds, “India’s always been fun. I want to make a Bollywood movie about my life there.”

Until that comes out, there’s an album coming out. “What really sucks is that me and Sidhu Moose Wala were working on a collab before he sadly passed. But I’m definitely going to do something with somebody in India for sure, on a big scale,” Gordo adds.