From HuffingtonPost.com:
Swedish House Mafia have added a new date to their swan song. Steve Angello, Sebastian Ingrosso and Axwell will stop by New York’s Hammerstein Ballroom on Feb. 28, the night of their newly announced Black Tie Rave.
The one night-only event will benefit Hurricane Sandy relief efforts. Tickets for the event will be auctioned off on Ticketmaster, beginning Dec. 14th at 10 a.m. EST. Starting bids are set at $100. A press release for the event said 100 percent of the net proceeds from the evening will be handed over to the Mayor’s Fund to Advance New York City and the Hurricane Sandy New Jersey Relief Fund.
“This time last year we were about to play MSG for the first time and that opened so many doors,” Ingrosso told The Huffington Post. “When we grew up, house music from NYC was king. We had to do it. And, to be honest, playing to 3,000 people in black tie and dressed up will be an amazing extra to this tour.”
“Growing up in Stockholm, we’ve always been very connected to New York,” Angello told HuffPost in advance of his SIZE in the Park show in Central Park. “It’s always been the big city outside the city to us.”
Swedish House Mafia is currently preparing for their final tour (aptly named One Last Tour), which kicks off Feb. 13 in San Francisco. Tickets for the tour sold out rapidly, but Live Nation kept opening new dates at some of the nation’s largest venues. New York fans unable to attend the Black Tie Rave can catch the act behind hits like “One,” “Miami 2 Ibiza” and “Save the World” at Madison Square Garden on March 1 and at Barclays Center from March 2 through March 4.
News of the group’s breakup stunned the electronic dance music world, as the three Swedes are a mainstay on the global festival circuit (they headlined Coachella). Angello told HuffPost that performing as Swedish House Mafia eventually became unsustainable. “I think we felt like it had become a very big machine,” he said. “I think the pressure … It just wasn’t having fun anymore. It was this humongous monster. We felt like tired. Swedish House Mafia was never something planned, it was just like, we’re three guys, let’s do this and have fun and throw parties and have a blast. So we just thought, ‘You know what? Let’s end this.'”
Black Tie Rave is hardly electronic dance music’s first benefit for Sandy victims. Pacha put on Help Heal N.Y., a party which featured donated performances from DJs and unpaid labor on the part of the bar and house staff, who even donated their tips. The Nov. 14 event raised over $150,000 for the Red Cross.
A Nov. 19 event called EDM For Sandy Relief featured performances by The Crystal Method, Tommie Sunshine, Drop the Lime and others. That event, which took place at Manhattan’s Gramercy Theatre, required a $20 ticket for entry.
