Shows

Hey, Ben here. EPR, short for Electro Pop Rocks, was quite the night.  You can check out the absolutely ridiculous photos on b33sf blog. Overall, I’d give the show and night a big thumbs up. Club 525 was super nice; featuring two bars (one dry) an upstairs and a second room. There leaking from room to room of noise was remarkably low seeing the mind crushing level they were playing the music at. One of my first questions was if the sound system was PK. If you know me, you’re already aware that I’m a snob for sound quality and fidelity. While my question never got answered, the speaker seat up was sick.Apparently, every pre-sale ticket (400) and door ticket (600) was sold. I’ll leave the majority of the review up to Phil.

Phil’s thoughts on the show:

You know the feeling that you get on a Wednesday when you realize there’s still a half week left before the weekend? So do the people behind EPR, a weekly event in San Francisco at Club 525 that recently has begun to draw in some big local and international names from the electronic music scene. They threw one of their biggest shows to date on Feb. 23^rd – calling on San Jose local NiT GriT and L.A.’s 12^th Planet for a for a night filled with ridiculous amounts of bass.

After braving the notoriously dickish staff of security at 525 to get inside (the bouncer that searched me was telling me how he loves getting paid to be an asshole) and completely missing EPR resident DJ duo K-Theory, I was greeted by the pounding bass of up-and-coming dubstep producer Getter. He’s spun a huge number of shows in and around the Bay Area recently with Vital SC and rose in the scene in very little time. His exponential growth in popularity should surprise no one – his sound is huge, heavy, and his remixes have been dropped by the likes of Downlink and The Juggernaut. For the majority of his set I wandered around the outskirts of the crowd talking to random people about how he and Minnesota are completely tearing up the SF scene right now, and one dude told me a story about how he used to be best friends with Getter before his fame turned him into a total douchebag. I was sorry to hear that as I watched him rip the dance floor with banger after banger from local producers as well as new material from some of the bigger guys (big ups for Skrillex’s remix of Benny Bennasi’s track Cinema). All in all, he spun a nice, balanced set that really got the crowd pumped for the headliners; I was just bummed to find out the popularity got to his head.

I perked up when NiT GriT came on stage. The guy is just really pleasing to watch spin, even though, to be completely honest, I spent some of his set resting and didn’t know a chunk of the tracks he dropped. He has a remix contest going on right now and coincidentally (or not), two big contenders are K-Theory and Getter, the dudes spinning right before him. Anyways, everything I heard him drop was down and dirty dubstep that made you want to jump around like a motherfucker.

After going to the bar to grab some water, I made my way towards the front of the stage to see the most anticipated act of the night, L.A. native 12th Planet. I had seen him once before and was hyped to hear what he would drop as a headliner. He wasted no time in dropping some huge energy tracks, the crowd went absolutely insane when he played ‘Needed Change’, his new collab with Skrillex. The track pretty perfectly embodies the sound that 12th Planet is leaning towards for the future – less of the slower, deeper, Nero-like tracks and more of the Skrillex style of seemingly random wobbles with breaks for melodic synths.

By this point in the show, 12th Planet was good n’ drunk. He was going insane for every drop he threw at us, making all sorts of bass faces and jumping up and down and into the crowd every chance he got. His mixing didn’t suffer much, and that added stage presence just made the whole show twice as fun. Too often I go to a show and see a DJ crouched behind a laptop, spinning a dope set but boring the shit out of the crowd. 12th Planet looked like he was having a genuinely good time, and the audience felt and matched his energy and danced more than I’ve ever seen at a weekly event like EPR.
The second half of the set was filled with dope remixes and classic dubstep anthems like ‘I Can’t Stop’, to which we all screamed the words and danced like crazy, mixed into his and Finch’s remix of ‘Youth Blood’, to which I swayed back and forth by myself. I felt a little sad when I realized he probably wouldn’t be producing tracks like that anymore in favor of the new Skrillex-y style. ‘Bass Cannon’ was dropped for the second or third time that night, much to the delight of the Flux Pavillion fans. It was a Flux heavy night, with the second to last track soothing us out with Flux’s remix of ‘Blue Skies’. Then he announced his last song, and destroyed the dance floor with the Doctor P remix of 12th’s track ‘Reasons’. We went wild, remembering the good times when dubstep wasn’t so cookie-cuttery and filled with generic sounds, and then the show was over. We all cheered, smiling almost as wide as 12th himself as he turned around, hugged a photographer, and, out of the blue, dropped ‘Yonkers’, that new track from Odd Future’s Tyler, the Creator. Half the crowd was filing out of the door and paid this no heed, and the other half, myself included, swagged the fuck out for that first verse before the music was stopped. I left super satisfied and filled with heavy wobbles, soothing basslines, and the image of a girl with both her middle fingers in the air diving into the crowd burned into my head.

Get The Fuck Down! – Getter

Datsik-Nuke’em (Remix) – Getter

This Old Heart – NiT GriT

Malfunction – Nit Grit

Needed Change – 12th Planet and Skrillex

Youth Blood – Jinder (12th Planet & Flinch Remix)

Reasons – 12th Planet & Juakali (Doctor P Remix)