May Madness

My beloved hometown of Copenhagen offered a handful of truly world class EDM artist in just 6 days. Here's a walk-through of the four concerts I attended in that insane first week of May.

 
Feed Me - Sunday April 29th

We casually walked in to the old steam driven pump station from 1858, now resurrected as a mid-size venue, when the young mau5keteer Feed Me from London played his slamming One Click Headshot from the new smaller stage on the first floor. He had obviously started early, as it was a school day the day after, so we missed the first half hour. We probably were about 200 dubstep lovers that had made it to the old water works building in central Copenhagen that Sunday evening. None the less, people were going nuts to the hard electro and dubsteppy tunes from Feed Me. I even saw people surfing the small crowd. Feed Me was clearly impressed by our late Sunday enthusiasm and twetted : "Shows like that are what DJing is all about. Copenhagen out of nowhere, it's turned into messiness".

He played a lot of his own stuff like Whiskers, One Click Headshot, Trichitillomania from his latest EP as well as his old hit Cloudburn and a lot of other good stuff including quite a few moobahton tracks, that seems to be the new black among EDM DJ's.

I wrote about Feed Me back in February where you can also check out his latest EP. Below you can enjoy his banger One Click Headshot from that EP.

Feed Me - One Click Headshot


Flux Pavilion - Sunday April 29th

While Feed Me moved to the left of the stage to enjoy a bottle of Jack D with his entourage, Flux Pavilion teared the place apart with his bass heavy UK style dubstep. People went absolutely nuts and security had to get on the stage to keep the crowd of it.

He'd also play a few moombah tracks but kept it pretty dubstep in general playing his own tracks like Hold Me Close, I Can't Stop, the Superbad track with his Circus buddy Doctor P and of course Bass Cannon the made the place crumble in bass related spasms. Flux Pavilion truly rocked the spot and was a notch over Feed Me in crowd control and performance.

Bass Cannon kill it that Sunday, see it in the video and check out some of his other great tracks below.



Flux Pavilion

Flux Pavilion and Feed Me at Pumpehuset gets 4 out of 6 stars.


Porter Robinson - Thursday May 3rd

OK, first show of the crazy first weekend of May, with young gun Porter Robinson at the place called Rust in the multicultural borough of Copenhagen called Nørrebro. Rust was originally created in the 80's as a campaign headquarter and café by some anti nuclear power activists and has later served as a nightclub and urban music venue. The place was pretty packed at the main floor and I would guess there were around 300 guests that night. The 20 year old American, now signed on the Skrillex label OWSLA, started out pretty hard and kept the tempo up playing great electro house-, some moombah- and a few dubstep tracks. The small dancefloor in front of the low and small stage was packed and security had to step in to prevent people from getting hurt in the chaos.

He played a couple of his own tracks, like Unison, as well as the Knife Party remix, both making the crowd very exited. He did a very cool set with high energy and variation and the crowd loved him, and so did I.

Porter Robinson gets 5 out of 6 stars.

Check out the video below from when he played the Unison remix by Knife Party and his latest track Language.



Porter Robinson - Language


Avicii - Friday May 4th

Around 8000 people turned up at historic Forum, the large exhibition and concert hall, that was actually blown up during the German occupation back in 1943, to see the sensation from our blue and yellow neighbors to the east. They sure had a hell of a party on the large Forum indoor floor. Warm up was from local DJ's Kongsted and the duo TooManyLeftHands. Personally I enjoyed the first half the most, where he played a handful og my favorites like Ingrosso and Alesso's Calling, In My Mind by Ivan Gough and Feenixpawl, a really nice mashup of Antidote and Greyhound by SHM and of course the neoclassic Levels mixed with that horrible Gotye song to keep it "fresh" I guess. Never the less, Avicii blew up the spot once again since WW2, with his monster hit Levels that made people scream and go absolutely insane. The VIP section turned me down quite a bit, there wasn't really anything VIP or Deluxe about it and it was filled with steroid pumped and heavily tattooed drug dealer types, that made it a bit hard to enjoy the show.

Avicii (and the sloppy production) gets 3 out of 6 stars.

I've included a video from the show and his latest unreleased collab with Nicky Romero below.



Avicii - Fuck School (feat. Nicky Romero)


Skrillex - Saturday May 5th

9000 people of all ages and subcultures had shown up, from tweens and business school graduates to parents with children and old fucks like myself. Skrillex has a broad appeal it seems. Warmup was some nice drum n' bass from Netsky but it was clear that everybody just waited to get to see the LA freakshow.

Most of his set was identical with what he played at UMF Miami in March, but there was, for me, one major difference. He played maybe five or six Knife Party tracks! He didn't in Miami, probably because Knife Party played the next day on the same stage, but it made all the difference for me as I both got to enjoy Skrillex own tracks and remixes as well as the greatest tracks from my beloved Knife Party. Of course he also played all his own stuff like Breakn' A Sweat, Devils Den, Ruffneck, First of the Year, Kill Everybody and the new Make It Bun Dem and several of his great remixes like his In for the Kill remix, the Promises remix, the Levels remix and of course the outstanding Cinema remix.

I found it one of the best concerts I've attended in Copenhagen maybe ever and would not hesitate to give it top marks, if it wasn't for the effective but somewhat aggressive security guys plowing through the crowd scouting for sinners to "arrest".

Skrillex gets 5 out of 6 stars.

Below you'll find a video of when he closed hos set playing Cinema in front of a sea of lighters and cell phones and his latest track with Damian Marley "Make It Bun Dem".



Skrillex & Damian Marley - MAKE IT BUN DEM