Bassnectar — Dubstep DJ & Producer

Lorin Ashton, who performs as Bassnectar, is an American DJ and producer from Santa Cruz, California, who attended his first rave in 1995 and taught himself to DJ while studying electronic music production at UC Santa Cruz, playing early sets at Burning Man and Bay Area parties. He began performing under the Bassnectar name around 2003 and played Shambhala Music Festival annually for 11 consecutive years, developing a live DJ approach known as controllerism, built around MIDI pad controllers and dual laptops running Ableton Live rather than standard CDJ setups. At his touring peak he played more than 150 shows a year and exceeded 200,000 ticket sales in both 2011 and 2012, headlining festivals including Coachella, Bonnaroo, Electric Daisy Carnival and Lollapalooza, and curating events such as Bass Center, including a sold-out date at Madison Square Garden. In July 2020 he stepped back from touring following multiple allegations of sexual misconduct, which he denied while acknowledging that his past actions had caused pain; a related lawsuit filed in 2021 was dismissed with prejudice after an out-of-court settlement in February 2025. He returned to limited live performance in October 2023 at Mandalay Bay in Las Vegas alongside the release of his twelfth album, The Golden Rule.