Swedish House Mafia heavy hitter Steve Angello has been on defense for the last 24 hours fighting back against some ‘haters’ that have labelled him a fraud behind the decks.

The whole controversy has bubbled over from Angello’s set at the Dutch EDM festival 'Dance Valley' over the weekend – the last chunk of which was filmed and uploaded to YouTube under the title Steve Angello – How To Fake Your Fans. As you can see HERE, Angello is seen playing from the one CDJ and with no headphones causing some viewers to ark up and question whether he has been playing pre-recorded sets.

Steve Angello - How To Fake Your Fans

“This is a disgrace,” one viewer commented below the video on YouTube. “This is embarrassing to DJ’s everywhere at all levels. to be completely honest, id DJ for free because i HAVE FUN DOING IT.angello’s ONLY motivation for DJing at this point is for the money.” Obviously, sic.

Immediately doing his best to douse the flames of the controversy Steve Angello has taken to his Twitter account to hit back against his detractors and also explain the footage in the video which he retorts is from the climax of his set in which he regularly plays a pre-made edit/bootleg that is sync’d up with his flurry of effects.

“When i do some festivals i have a team there that does all my pyro, fx and co2´s, + most of them have a synced “fireworks show” that is synced to the music so nothing goes wrong for the fireworks show since timing everything is extremely hard for them, so i have a medley mix i close with so they can have everything synced, most big festivals have that and its nothing new, as soon as your closing under a big finale you have that going on…” Angello wrote on his Twitter. “i know some of you will still hate cause of the fact that hating if your game but i have now explained it and take it or leave it. i don’t have to prove myself that i´m able to mix i´ve done that my whole life and spend more time mixing then with my daughter so thats it.”

With angry followers continuing the conflict online Angello penned another lengthy response even challenging a so called ‘hater’ to face off with him behind the decks.

“Don’t you have better things to do then make up bullshit to write about me faking a whole set when i just explained that it was the last 11 mins of my set so they could fire of the special fx and all the fireworks, stop with your bullshit and get on with your lives, if it would be up to you guys we would all be stuck in cells without electricity and banging on a floor without a big show so you would feel better for yourselves not being there, i would never fake a whole set in my entire life and those 10 mins are part of the show. if you don’t wanna see fireworks and a massive finale stop buying tickets to events where that happens and stay home instead. i hate when people make up a big story and feed on it like sugar to ants. make something better of your time instead of wasting mine!! if you would put as much time on your own careers as you do talking shit maybe a thing like this wouldn’t affect you, i know who my real fans are and you haters are not my real fans, cause if you would be you would get what i´m saying after seeing the shows we do, you probably haven’t even been to any of my shows and won’t ever come so drop it, get on with your lives! I wanna take this Hater thing to the next level. I wanna fly one over to ibiza to play with my SD cards without headphones and put it on youtube. I’ll do the same directly after and we’ll see if you can pull it off. ? I’ll pick one of you guys and we’ll go for it. So who’s up for the challenge?”

It’s a bit convoluted but you kinda get the gist. What do you make of it all?

2 words spring to mind... Lame duck.
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