Sometimes things get complicated.
Like, for instance, when one of the country’s most popular dubstep and house artists comes to town and the show’s venue gets changed during the promotion. Or when less than half the audience is bound to stadium seating while everyone else has an ecstacy-riddled bonanza on the dance floor, but those kids in the seats didn’t get a bad deal, either.
Nick Nice, the Dirty Disco Kids and Skrillex opened for Deadmau5, hiding beats from Canadian DJ Joel Zimmerman’s show and hit “Ghosts N’ Stuff” in their own beats, acting as tantalizing foreplay to the show which came on at 9:30 pm.
“Ghosts N’ Stuff” was indeed orgasmic. When the cube’s bright white light and the ominous opening organ cords hit the audience, it only took a second for the tension to break and the audience responded accordingly: waves and waves of fist-pumping and jumping.
Electronic concerts are all about energy. There’s something especially magical about being smushed into a stranger’s armpit and simultaneously being hit in the nose mid-jump. The crowd’s energy reached its apex after “Ghosts N’ Stuff,” but Zimmerman kept the energy up with a light show that did not quit and a set list filled with the hits he is famous for and the ones from when he was only known on chat forums as “that dead mouse guy.”
There were at least three different lighting pieces: the notorious Deadmau5 cube, which he spun from during the entire shown, horizontal and vertical strips, and trippy spotlights. At one time, Zimmerman made puppet shadow’s on the Alliant Energy Center’s ceiling-classic. The entire arena was continuously bathed a light show which made the stage look sometimes on fire, sometimes in smoke, but always in different, brilliant colors streaming over the audience. If there is such a thing as beauty in an electronic show, it was here.
Things for the Madison Deadmau5 show may have gotten complicated, but it was well worth the $32 and bus ride to the Alliant Energy Center. Deadmau5 attracts all kinds: the young, the old, and those girls who think its okay to dress like anime characters in public. But throughout this show, everyone was pulsing to Canadian DJ Joel Zimmerman’s insanely popular record together…sometimes things just get whatever.
