Ahead of their upcoming Journey of a Lifetime tour, Zeds Dead are entering a new era with both reflection and momentum. Nearly 17 years into their career, the duo have continued pushing creative boundaries, building immersive live experiences while turning Deadbeats into one of bass music’s most recognizable independent brands. As they prepare for their most ambitious chapter yet, Hooks and DC opened up about the emotional weight behind this moment, the legacy of Deadrocks, and what continues to fuel them after all these years.
LIANA: Where are you both emotionally entering this chapter? Anything you are most excited about heading into this tour?
HOOKS: We’re just grinding, trying to make this the best tour ever. We’ve been in the studio every day working on new music. We have a cool upcoming project that I don’t know if we can talk about yet, but also so much new music for the actual tour. We’re working with the visuals team and trying to make this very immersive.
DC: Excitement. Inspired. Grateful. Stressed too. Definitely inspired though. I think we’re deep in a really good creative zone right now. And grateful because we’re doing our biggest tour thus far after being in the game for almost 17 years now.
LIANA: How are you curating the production and design for this tour?
HOOKS: It’s going to be all over the place. A lot of new stuff, a lot of things from different eras. It’s kind of the culmination of what we’ve been building with the audiovisual side of things too. Remixing older tracks and incorporating footage and vocal elements from past records into the visuals.
We have this quote we are sampling that said “scientists believe sounds never actually die, they just keep traveling at really low volume.” So the concept became this idea of a transmitter or satellite dish picking up sounds from the last hundred years and remixing them together. Everything becomes jumbled together in this stream of sound and memory.
DC: Just tapping into some sort of spectrum or stream.
LIANA: That’s honestly how your sets feel, like a full journey from beginning to end.
HOOKS: Exactly. A journey is the perfect way to put it. We’re always trying to guide the emotional experience and the energy shifts throughout the set. We put a lot into sequencing things in a way where moments hit how we want them to hit.
DC: Which obviously ties into the name of the tour too — Journey of a Lifetime.
LIANA: Deadbeats is hitting its 10-year milestone this year. Looking back, did you ever imagine it would evolve into the community and platform it’s become today?
HOOKS: It’s crazy how fast time flies. Ten years passes so quickly. But we’re really proud of what it’s become because it genuinely feels like its own thing now — not just something attached to us. People actually want to release on Deadbeats. It has its own identity and its own sound.
The radio show, the artists we work with, the releases — I think people understand what Deadbeats represents musically now. It grew really organically.
DC: We honestly didn’t have huge expectations when we first started it. We just wanted a place where we could release our own music and maybe some of our friends’ music too. Seeing what it’s turned into now has been amazing.
HOOKS: And it’s cool being independent. We’ve built these events and experiences where people associate Deadbeats with a certain atmosphere and community. If we release an artist, we can also bring them into the live side through our events and shows. It’s become this whole ecosystem.
LIANA: Speaking of your events and shows, what does it mean seeing fans make the pilgrimage to Deadrocks every year?
HOOKS: It’s amazing honestly. It really is like a pilgrimage at this point. Red Rocks is already one of the best venues in the world, so people naturally want to travel there, but seeing how much Deadrocks itself has grown into its own thing is really special.
DC: It’s kind of become our marquee event every year. We’re lucky to have this huge weekend around Fourth of July that people genuinely plan their year around.
HOOKS: We definitely don’t take those shows for granted either. We give those weekends everything we have creatively, and I think people feel that energy when they’re there.
DC: You really get the full spectrum of what we do live too. Between the two Red Rocks shows, the Mission Ballroom show, and the Jamboree sets, every experience has a completely different flavor. We can’t wait to kick off our tour in Denver, it will really set the tone for what’s to come.
LIANA: How did you approach choosing support for the tour?
HOOKS: We went back and forth with our team building out a wishlist and figuring out who fit the vibe of the tour best. Our team has been amazing helping curate that side of things too.
At the end of the day, we’re putting our nose to the grindstone, and trying to make this as good as humanly possible. That’s the main goal right now. But it’s gonna be our best one yet.
As the Journey of a Lifetime Tour approaches, Zeds Dead are proving that longevity in electronic music comes from constant evolution. Between ambitious new production concepts, unreleased music, and immersive design elements, Hooks and DC are entering this next chapter with the same creative hunger that helped define their rise in the first place. And if this next era proves anything, it’s that even after 17 years, Zeds Dead are still setting the standard for transforming live shows into unforgettable experiences.
The tour starts on July 2nd, 2026 at the Red Rocks Amphitheater. For more information and to buy tickets click here.
