1. For electronic dance music fans irritated that Las Vegas doesn’t get the full-production shows by artists such as Porter Robinson and Eric Prydz, Skrillex’s festival-closing, Foo Fighters-counterprogramming set last night could be considered a thrown bone. Though the former post-hardcore-to-dubstep producer regularly DJs at XS, it isn’t the same experience as when he tours the country, typically due to the club’s limiting configuration. But for Life Is Beautiful, Skrillex brought his badass-looking spaceship DJ booth, which elevated high above the crowd mid-set and was outlined with the sort of blinking/cascading lights found on casino marquees. Videos—both crafted for Skrillex’s stage show and lifted from secondary sources—played behind him on a giant screen. And during the set’s most visually striking moment, countless inflatable balls were released into the crowd and changed colors in accordance with the music. Thankfully, Skrill dispensed with the usual Vegas megaclub gimmickry (the streamers, the confetti, the crowd-shrouding cryo showers).
2. Sadly, Skrillex’s DJ set sounded like a Vegas megaclub set, which is to say it incorporated more of the EDM anthems and Top 40 (i.e. DJ Snake and Lil Jon’s “Turn Down For What,” Calvin Harris’ “Summer”) hits than it did the bass-y, techno-teasing tracks he played during his Coachella set earlier in the year (when he debuted the spaceship show). Furthermore, it was disappointing to see him play such short segments of better tracks (Duck Sauce’s “NRG,” Skrillex’s own “Recess” and “Bangarang”) so he could squeeze so much into his mash-up style, genre-spanning set. As he pandered to what may have been sold to him as a more mainstream crowd—to say nothing of our increasingly ADHD dancefloor culture—it made me wonder what damage Vegas nightclubs are inflicting on frequently visiting DJs who can otherwise play a more fleshed out set with unknown tracks and producers.
Life Is Beautiful
3. That being said, Skrillex appeared to give the large Ambassador Stage crowd what it wanted. Undeterred by three-day-festival fatigue, the throng found a second wind and showed remarkable energy during the 90-minute set. The air above it exploded in limbs and LED foam sticks during the intro to certain tracks and sonic cues, be they grimy trap breaks or feel-good 4/4 commercial house. Genre purists may have scratched their heads, but Sunday night’s audience put their trust in Skrillex’s musical filter, which, to his credit, handily coalesces the most disparate of modern sounds.
