With each passing year my disclaimers about Electronic Dance Music (EDM) and my place in it only seems to get longer as the culture surrounding it only gets stranger. I’m an outsider among a group of people who celebrate being outsiders who have become the ultimate in mainstream excess. I’ve never really fit in anywhere, even here – I don’t do drugs, didn’t play House Music in the 90s, didn’t play Trance in the 00s and I certainly don’t play Dubstep now. With each year the commaraderie I once enjoyed has been vastly taken over by the current crop of tourists and quite frankly, I’m just too old for this shit.
However, I will always identify with its culture’s need to keep pushing it as far as it can and can’t help but be curious as to what that is.
I also enjoy getting paid good money to DJ for less than an hour – even if its only simliar, nerdy white guys that dig my shit.
Lights All Night 2013
Day 1 – Dec 27th
Two blocks away from the Dallas Convention Center for Lights All Night, and that rumbling, white noise roar of a crowd pre-concert is already audible.The colossal sonic happenings inside – thousands of feet removed, and buffered by countless layers of stone and steel – vibrate the downtown concrete architecture both overhead and underfoot. Once in sight, the entrance line is a daunting mass, a costumed hoard that represents the ultimate ‘camel through the eye of a needle’ scenario. What strikes you at first is how reminiscent the general fashion aesthetic is to classic, acid house rave culture: sunglasses, pacifiers, beaded jewelry, extravagant headgear. Although there is now a strong MTV, bro-heavy, Spring Breakers flare to the whole scene. Everything is so obviously candied, surface and low-art cheesy.
Though this being my third year (and 2nd as a performer) inside, the initial impressions are like a punch in the face. This is going to be a wild ride; this place is a circus. The number of people in here alone is cause for breathlessness. As a solidly massive EDM festival, Lights All Night provides a sensory overload.
At first glance, the stage rooms appear to breathe and swell — the result of a continual series of crescendo-cued strobe-heavy explosions of lights. The production quality, the merciless synths and the frenzied so-large-it’s-anonymous crowd coalesce to create an environment of total, spellbound immersion, all set to an ADD rattled, YOLO-generation species of dance music that’s essentially a soundtrack to recreational drug use. LAN allows concertgoers a certain measure of freedom to be what or whomever they want. In virtue of this unspoken rule, there are no people inside LAN, only masked characters, animals and creatures. Point of reference: bikini-clad barely-legals fall into the modest end of this outfit spectrum.
I’m not performing tonight, only here to check out the scene and prepare for tomorrow and I don’t feel guilty at all that I also wanted to see Icona Pop
Ever since their single I Don’t Care appeared on the crown jewel of hipster TV shows Girls they went from being virtually unheard of to giving those viewers something new to talk about. The show however, was less than memorable.
I now had like three hours to kill and actually left for a bit to go to House of Blues down the street. When I returned, marijuana smoke hung in the air like a swampy haze. Streams of confetti stretch from the ceiling across the whole room. Fluorescents and neon lighting, framed by triangular shapes of actual spitting fire. The air is thick and a vaporous stew of fog machine geysers, pyrotechnic aftermath –
The main stage, dubbed “The Mothership,” surrounded a sea of dilated pupils, There’s a Santa, a Power Ranger, Jesus, and countless almost entirely naked people all within five feet of me.
I watched the hype of Deadmau5 for all of 15 mins –
Once Deadmua5 finally smoothes out his pre-start obstacles, his set kicks off with a whimper not a bang. Still, on his full-on mouse-head appearance, a field of smartphones spring up like with all of this to look at, people have forgotten to witness shit with their OWN EYES.. He manages to lose most of them (and me) within 10 minutes. The reason is that his music, in all its primary color, no-tricks-under-its-sleeve glory, is painfully and completely un-danceable. I go check out Krewella instead.
At another gig over the summer I found myself inadvertently in the middle of one her video shoots – this gig was much much better, even if I will never identify with this type of artist.
Day 2 – Dec 28th
I make it back the next night, this time in a performer’s capacity – I park at the Crown Plaza hotel (as instructed) only to find nowhere there that knows anything. Since I already had my credentials from the night before I said fuck it and walked the 5 blocks over. As soon as the cold and homeless approached, I immediately rethought my decision.
Lights All Night’s radiant, million dollar productions make for the most interesting visual treats. The streaming rays of transparent light, the whiteout strobes, and the living color stage projections all find their endpoint on the Convention Center floor, that once again is riddled with crazy charachters.
I get over to Main Stage just in time to mix it up with Above & Beyond
The scene from up there was incredible – I didn’t realize just how high up it is and it really gives you an idea of just how many people are here. It becomes this seething roaring mass from up here.
I check out a few other rooms before my set time – Forgive me for being predictable, but the repetition is exhausting. And no, I don’t mean in the conventional swaddling, tension-build that represents house/techno music’s soul; I refer, instead, to EDM’s ‘1-2-3 bang’ crescendos that occur far too often, reducing the music to a series of big reveals that strip away its ability to surprise and inspire. At first, these big bangs are moving, almost shocking, but after 20 or so releases they become mundane, like the way something as poignant as a sunrise becomes commonplace in the face of everyday repetition. What remain are songs that have nothing left up their sleeves, which robs the music of its drama.
O the 30k in attendance I’d say less than 1k saw me do my thing and I would say way considerably less than that cared. I’m fine with that, but what I was annoyed by is that during my set I was flanked on each side by some truly annoying shit.
On one side was one of those statue mimes, who paint themselves one solid color (usually silver) to appear statue like – and then move slightly when you tip them.
That’s not normally annoying – this guy however was ridiculous and apparently he would ONLY take at least $20 bucks and would heckle the passerby if they didn’t.
Who the fuck is going to impulsively hand this guy $20 bucks?? – No one and he knew that so his thing was to bully them and it was really distracting.
On the other side was this thing I couldn’t quite get a handle on while DJ’n but in a moment of clarity I notice this dude. He’s muscle-bound, wearing neon red sunglasses, a helicopter beanie cap, suspenders, and the brightest tennis shoes Converse ever made. He’s a cartoon, and not in an entertaining way.
His fucking Ruby Slippers were so bright and beaming off the lights above that I was so blinded that I could barely see what I was doing.
Since I’ve only been here for less than 90 mins (and admittedly I was done and ready to go) and almost half of that I was DJ’n I decided to check out the shitshow that is always a good Major Lazer gig.
The music begins. Diplo & the gang appear in the DJ booth landing, The stage is one mammoth screen that reads “MAJOR LAZER” in tropical colors, several hundred feet wide. Bass permeates the air and the crowd begins to fill as the recognizable Major Lazer animations flood the stage. Only seconds in, and this already surpasses everything that’s happened all weekend.
There are two long-haired dancers on each side of the stage, spinning ropes of hair as their bodies contort – A countdown appears, 30 is the top and the music hits its stride, it’s in full swing now — a globally eclectic, electro-dancehall music that sounds like a dub house party from outer space. The level of showmanship is unlike anything else at Lights All Night. During a song apparently called Bubble Butt, dude asks all the “biggest assed” women to come upfront. Security guards escort them to the stage, and then, the twerking rally commences. The scene is so silly and willfully vapid it’s more dumb than fun.
And the instructions from up on high keep raining down. “I want to see everybody take your shirts off,”. Shirts are now lassoes swinging overhead. A drum ‘n’ bass interlude precedes another command: “I want to see you throw your shirts into the air … on the count of three.” One … two … three, and you almost can’t believe it, nearly everyone obeys; it’s Mardi Gras inside the Dallas Convention Center.
Photos –
Roy Turner
LAN Staff
