Who is Zhu? That’s the pivotal question nowadays in the electronic dance music community. He first came on the scene with an anonymously disclosed remix of Outkast’s “Ms. Jackson.” The song was a big hit on all the major music blogs, but no one knew who actually made the song. The deep house sound from this remix led people to believe that the famous EDM group, Disclosure, was behind the popular remix. A week after releasing the Outkast remix, the anonymous EDM artist came out as Zhu, with the release of his first original track, “Superfriends.” In April of 2014, he came out with his first EP The Nightday, which featured his first single “Faded.”

Zhu’s entire aura revolves around anonymity and judging him solely on the music that he makes. It took a lot of digging to finally unearth the anonymous artist as Steven Zhu from Los Angeles. Zhu has apparently been working on various music projects since 2011, but he has kept completely quiet on social media projects until now.

His marketing tactics keep up with his air of anonymity, focusing on a gorilla and grassroots approach. Zhu recently had a secret show in Brooklyn, NY where he made his fans aware of a show somewhere in NY, but never specified the place or time. He posted posters all over the city of an upcoming show, but the details remained anonymous.

The anonymous approach in this day and age is reliving in the face of huge marketing tactics used my EDM producers in the modern age. Rather than judged by the music, their marketing team is judges on whether or not they were able to find more followers. Zhu’s tactic is reminiscent of Daft Punk before they were discovered. Critics believe that Zhu’s marketing techniques could possibly change the EDM scene, with more of a focus on the created rather than the creator.

Check out Xavier Capdepon’s new remix of Zhu’s first single, “Faded.”