Zedd interview ahead of Telos Tour in India: ‘My music is deeply inspired by Dragon Ball’

Zedd returns to India after a decade with his Telos Tour 2025, showcasing his evolution from EDM to pop.

It’s been nearly a decade since Anton Zaslavski, better known to the world as Zedd, last set foot in India, and a lot has changed since then. The German-Russian producer’s fingerprints are everywhere — chart-topping hits like “Clarity”, “Stay”, and “The Middle” have not only lodged themselves in the cultural bloodstream but have, in many ways, dictated its rhythm. If Billboard’s Top 40 for the past ten years have been any indication, the Grammy-winning musician has gone from being EDM’s prodigious wunderkind to a full-fledged pop savant, bridging the worlds between electronic and mainstream pop.

Telos is perhaps his most complete vision yet. The new album is a culmination of his classical training, dancefloor instincts, and personal evolution. Real drums crash alongside spectral synths and his collaborators range from pop powerhouses to underground voices that could only exist in a post-streaming, genre-agnostic landscape. It is, in many ways, a distillation of the constant tension in his music: structure versus spontaneity, human versus machine, past versus future.

Now, on the eve of the India leg of his Telos tour, Zedd seems reflective. There is something about this album that feels different, not just to his listeners, but to him. “I think Telos is my grand work,” he says. “It’s the album that combines my entire life into one.”

At 34, Zedd has lived many musical lives. He was a classically trained pianist before he ever touched a synthesiser. He played drums in a metal band before he even considered making electronic music. And, as it turns out, he has been chasing a particular sound —  a distinct emotional resonance — since childhood.

“My music is really deeply inspired by Dragon Ball,” he says almost sheepishly, acknowledging the lifelong grip that the late Akira Toriyama’s iconic anime franchise has had on him. “The theme song, “Cha-La Head-Cha-La”, has been so deeply ingrained in me that, honestly, everything I write is subconsciously influenced by it.”

And now, in a serendipitous turn of events, the opening theme for Dragon Ball Daima— the thumping “Jaka Jaan”— comes courtesy of none other than the lifelong Dragon Ball disciple, joined by Japanese vocal duo C&K. He also lends his touch to the closing theme, “Nakama”, alongside Japanese-American singer Ai. The gig likely didn’t find him by chance considering his fandom has never been a well-kept secret.

“Anytime I talk to my friends, and I tell them about any of the cool things that are happening in my life, they’re always like, ‘Yeah, awesome.’ But when I said I was working on Dragon Ball, they lost their minds.”