Skrillex // UEA - 20.02.2012
"Skinny jeans next to baggies, punk hair next to Bieber-esque bouffant, the common factor that unites them is that whatever they are doing, everyone is loving it." - Skrillex draws a mixed crowd, as Smiley finds out...
This night has been eagerly anticipated as one of the biggest things to happen to the UEA this year. Ok, I know it’s only February, so we’ll say within the past 365 days. It seems like in the small time between the tickets going on sale late last year and the gig actually happening that Skrillex with his style of EDM (it’s NOT dubstep) has taken the music world by storm and broken into the consciousness of the hitherto uninitiated. With his oscillating, screech filled tones and stomach rumbling bass, he’s just won three Grammys, which puts him firmly in the category of “acts we should pat the UEA on the back for booking”. Seriously – good work, fellas!
The night starts with support from Alvin Risk, who is part of the “Skrillex Cell”. Clearly in this sense, cell means school, and it obviously believes in rote learning as the Pringle jumper clad Risk (don’t worry, it’s post-modern) bangs out exciting, if somewhat carbon-copy sounds. The crowd enjoy it, but to me it’s a bit too similar to the sound of dance music’s new golden-decks - Skrillex himself - to make a good starter. Speaking of decks makes me feel old – gone are the days of vinyl, or even CD mixing. Now the laptop is king, and this along with one box of knobs and buttons (that seems designed to be carefully angled so that you can’t see what they are or what they do) are all that sits on the table in front of him. This leaves Risk free to jump around making random shapes to his own non-random beeps like some kind of meta-Thunderbirds puppet. You start to wonder as you watch him, if all those moves are necessary or if some of it is just because if he wasn’t dancing around, he wouldn’t be doing a lot else. Just how much of this is pressing play on a laptop and what exactly is he doing with that mysterious box? Even if there is an element of live control over the sound, where does it begin and stop? Couldn’t we push this dancing clown to one side altogether, press play and get some girls up on stage or something?
These are not questions you ask yourself when watching Skrillex perform. He takes to the stage on a platform complete with another laptop/box-of-switches arrangement - except this platform is twice the height of the previous one. Just as you start to wonder if he has a serious Napoleon complex, the show starts. Suddenly everything becomes clear except the music – which is pure filth. The reason that Skrillex is so high (?) is that this puts him directly in front of the biggest screen ever to grace the LCR, which when it starts to display rotating 3D images and fractal patterns in time with the music, transforms Skrillex from mere man to bouncing silhouette god of dance.
The crowd goes insane as lasers hover over the heads of the people on the dance floor, almost as if a trap has been sprung, and a cage is being lowered to stop escapees from the dubby onslaught. As the song peaks, massive dry ice canons at the front send up huge columns of smoke. It is truly a spectacle to behold, and you can see the devil’s grin on his face as the skinny-jeaned, undercut haired maestro plays with the crowd, which he does well whilst still not over-using the technique. This is not your usual monotony of peaks and troughs, but carefully constructed waves which power the crowd along without trying to wear them out. The crowd, however seem determined to do just that regardless, and there are already a pile of teenage casualties that have been dragged trainerless from the front.
Much like the music itself, the crowd is a wonderfully diverse mixture of people and sub-cultures that all do their own thing together. I look around and see circle pits going off next to groups of girls gyrating and grinding against each other next to old school ravers, bouncing up and down reaching for the lasers. Skinny jeans next to baggies, punk hair next to Bieber-esque bouffant, the common factor that unites them is that whatever they are doing, everyone is loving it. It reminds me of the Prodigy when they used to play at Rosie’s in Great Yarmouth in the early days - there’s such a mixture of people that are all attracted to this incredibly unique sound.
I’m sure as he gets even bigger, he will be accused of “selling out” or “going mainstream” but that is missing the point – he was never alternative. This music is not exclusive generically; it is for anyone that can handle their music being this crazy and this hard, and there’s a sense of unity in the crowd that transcends the whole idea of alternative/mainstream, and makes it seem laughable. If you get the chance (sadly I doubt it will ever happen in Norwich again) go and see Skrillex, it might just change your outlook on music and if you do like it, get on the train – there’s plenty of room for everyone and tonight I get the distinct feeling there will be no stopping it.
