Jesse Kardon is heading to Coachella’s Sahara Tent on Sunday, April 19, as Subtronics lands one of the festival’s most prominent spots this year. The 33-year-old dubstep producer, who has long been known for his aggressive, bass-heavy sets, will play the massive tent after years of working toward exactly this booking.
Kardon said he has been “really super hyper focused on Coachella” since finishing his tour two or three weeks earlier, and that the run had been part of a several-year strategy to reach the festival. He said the December shows at L.A.’s Shrine Auditorium were designed as a test of that momentum, adding that the hope was to sell out three nights and build a case for the booking. Instead, he sold out six shows, then went on to headline a set at the Sphere in Las Vegas in the fall.
The Sahara slot matters because Coachella has rarely given a dubstep-rooted artist such a visible platform. Subtronics is described as the highest-billed artist from that lane on this year’s lineup, and the festival’s bill is already unusually heavy on dance music, with EDM making up nearly 45% of it. For Kardon, it is also a public marker of how far he has come in 15 years, from smaller clubs in Philadelphia to some of the biggest rooms in the country.
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That growth is visible in the music as well. In recent years, he has widened his sound with releases including a remix of John Summit’s “Crystallized feat. Inéz,” “Fibonacci Pt. 2,” “Infinity” featuring Grabbitz and “Contour” featuring Lyrah. He also met dubstep artist Level Up, known as Sonya Broner, and she is now his wife.
Kardon’s Coachella return is not his first. He made a surprise set at the Do Lab stage in 2022, but this booking is a different kind of step. He will also perform at the Fox Theater in Pomona on Tuesday and at GV Surf Club in Palm Springs on April 18, keeping Southern California on his schedule as the festival week builds toward the Sahara Tent set.
For Subtronics, the answer to whether all that planning mattered is already here: the long game paid off. What was once a target is now a high-profile Coachella slot, and Kardon says even he can feel the scale of it, saying that “both me and my inner child are completely freaking out.”
