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I’m not normally one to be incredibly excited for a dubstep show, but when I heard Excision was touring around with a 100,000 watt sound system I was giddy. If anyone deserves that giant amount of sound it’s definitely this guy – he’s been known as one of the heaviest hitters in the scene for a number of years now.
Before the insanity that was to befall us during Excision’s set, supporting acts Liquid Stranger and Lucky Date took the stage. Having seen Liquid Stranger before, I knew what to expect – but maybe because of the low volume early in the evening I was extremely bored during his set. It was big ol’ dubstep songs mixed into other big ol’ dubstep songs. The most memorable moment of this hour was a cool little Star Wars rendition, but what dubstep artist doesn’t fool around with that at some point? The bottom line is that the set lacked variation.
I would like to take this moment to mention the fans that I was surrounded by when Liquid Stranger came on. For some reason, heavy dubstep fans decide it is absolutely necessary to impose their angry will on the rest of the crowd and start uncontrollable mosh pits in the middle of the dance floor. This was just the worst. I cannot imagine anything more unpleasant and obnoxious at a show, especially at a small venue like this – except what I heard them saying when Lucky Date came on.
Lucky Date has been absolutely murdering lately, and with the recent release of his singles ‘I Want You’ and Six 16′ it was no surprise his set was fantastic. This was high energy electro/complextro, in my opinion a wonderful choice to up the energy and prepare the crowd for the main act. He played a great set, plain and simple, and while a large portion of the crowd went dumb in the front, I noticed a huge population of people that consistently said things like “where’s the dubstep man” and “I thought this was a dubstep show man” and “I really only wanna hear dubstep man”. Maybe this is me being me, but I was under the impression that EDM fans were supposed to be open minded, especially when the music being played is the same as the main genre some bpm lower. Like shit, if you like dubstep and can’t get into complextro or any other genre, I have no idea what you’d even be doing at any EDM performance. Variation is the name of the game right now, and soon there will be no place for these closed minded fans and they’ll be forced back to the frat houses/drug dens/other frat houses from whence they came. What I’m trying to say here is that Lucky Date killed no matter what genre you’re into, and its a damn shame more people didn’t realize it.
Six 16 (Original Mix) – Lucky Date
Now, before his set, Lucky Date made the announcement “I know it’s not that loud right now, but trust me, when he [Excision] comes on it’s loud as fuck. We’re selling earplugs at the merch booth if you don’t want to die tomorrow. Because seriously, it’s loud as fuck.” I paid this no heed. I thought yeah yeah sure it’s going to be loud, but nothing much more insane than I’ve heard before. I have never been so wrong about anything in my entire life. Seriously, this system was insane. I can only describe the volume and level of low tones as the sensation of being underwater, only every single hair on your body is standing up and your ears want to take your life. If nothing else, I strongly recommend getting some earplugs and seeing this simply for the novelty of it – I guarantee it is like nothing you have ever heard before. The custom lights were cool too – the big unveiling revealed an X like structure that raised Excision to a level far above the crowd, supplemented by two giant LED Xs on either side. Such light fun as shooting robots and Darth Vader masks entertained us while Excision dropped track after track of pure and utter destruction, and the crowd yelled things like ‘You are God” and ‘What the fuck” over and over and over again. The key difference between a performer like Liquid Stranger and Excision is variation. While Liquid Stranger stayed stagnant on one style of dub, Excision went all over the map, from gross 140 bpm dubstep to drum and bass to drumstep and everything in between. That variation, mixed with the insane lights and absolutely unreal sound system (which, may I add, was EQued perfectly), made this show one I’ll remember for a long while. I’ll just selectively forget the mosh pits.
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