We sat down with Phoenix event company Relentless Beats founder Thomas Turner to chat about AI-generated songs, Valley music venues and the evolution of EDM.
By Madison Rutherford | Photography by Thomas Ingersoll
Valley native Thomas Turner began his career spinning records at Tempe’s now defunct dance club Freedom at Pompeii in the early 1990s and hosted his first rave in 2000 at an abandoned post office in Flagstaff. Since then, he has remained a faithful steward of electronic dance music (EDM) throughout the Valley and beyond, producing festivals like PHXLIGHTS and Body Language via his Phoenix event company Relentless Beats. With nearly 300 events that draw more than 250,000 attendees each year, Turner has successfully broken the stigma that raves are dangerous, drug-fueled gatherings and helped bring them into the mainstream locally. He has also brought legendary DJs like Steve Aoki, Skrillex and Tiësto to Valley audiences. This year, he’s teaming up with Coachella light tech Stephen Lieberman, music industry vet Steve Kushnir and Ocotillo restaurateur Walter Sterling to launch a brand-new venue in the former FilmBar space in Downtown Phoenix. We sat down with Turner to chat about AI-generated songs, Valley music venues and the evolution of EDM.
What’s been the biggest change in scaling events? What’s remained the same?
My love for well-made electronic music has stayed the same. There’s a lot more music being made these days and a lot more dance parties being held. While we provide a full spectrum of dance music to the community, it’s important to us to stay true to the roots that created the path for all these artists to work in this industry and to support dance music of all kinds. Growth is tough, but distinguishing communities, distinguishing brands and creating sustainability to service the full spectrum is invaluable.
You began hosting fests at Phoenix Raceway in 2022. Why is it the ideal venue?
Anywhere we can make the appropriate noise and have a clean palate to design a site, to come in with our creators, our artists and our site planners, and plan a usable site for our events works. Right now, WestWorld, the NASCAR track and Rawhide all serve that purpose. We’re also working on a marquee music festival that’s going to go into a marquee park in Downtown Phoenix for this year, too.
What’s the biggest difference between audiences in 1994 and those in 2024?
A lot of it is exactly the same – people going out with their friends trying to have the best time ever. Now, an AI music platform, in one second, will generate a song that’s fully exportable, nice file quality and can make it sound like any producer you want, and it’s your song, so you can go release it as an artist right now. You can completely embellish your whole career through this technology. You’re going to have all these people listening to music where there was no love, blood, sweat, tears, trial or error. I don’t think there’s anything wrong with that… but when you watch a person get emotionally involved in a performer and it’s not authentic, that part is challenging for me.
A few years ago, there was a lot of contention around Shady Park and noise complaints. What’s the status now that you’re planning to host events there again?
There was a court case that saw them mediate everything that happened here and come to a conclusion that we could find a way for it with some modifications that helped the whole community feel good about Shady Park hosting events again. There’s some construction now to be done and a period of time that will take. Sometime later this year, we’ll be able to host events again.
You have a notebook where you write down future festival names. Tell us more about that process.
I’ll be listening to a song or [marketing director] Dylan [Arndt] will come to me with an idea that will inspire a conversation that will lead to a choice. Some will come from songs that I’ve listened to for a long time. I sort of steal it out of that and call it a party.
