Fifteen years ago, a boy in Berlin learned how to move a crowd. He was fifteen, barely old enough to get into the clubs he played, but already bending the rules of the scene like light through a prism. Four days ago, that same boy—now Marlon Hoffstadt, now DJ Daddy Trance—descended onto the Perry’s Stage at Lollapalooza Chicago, a beacon of pure euphoria in a Midwestern August haze.

For nearly an hour, Grant Park’s skyline was drowned in a tide of trance, Eurodance, and rave—tracks slipping between the nostalgic and the nuclear, stitched together by the grin of a man who knows exactly how much more you can dance before your knees give out. Fans swarmed the barricade—arms raised, eyes glazed—in total communion with the man in neon hair who treats every crowd like an afterparty at the end of the world.

This week also marks another collision course: Hoffstadt’s first collaboration with Amsterdam’s KI/KI, Losing Control, out today via Capitol Records, alongside recent drops like his All Yours EP and Supersonic / Hands Up In The Sky. Next up, his Party of the Year series launches at ADE and The Warehouse Project.

If Lollapalooza was any indicator, Daddy’s orbit is expanding fast. Stand too close, and you’ll get pulled in.

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