Excision
Club Nokia
Feb. 9, 2013
This weekend, Canadian bass king Excision brought his Execution Tour to Club Nokia in downtown Los Angeles. Born Jeff Abel, Excision kicked off 2013 with a 50-stop North American tour, unveiling his new live show and the future of bass music, featuring the “Executioner,” a video-and-lighting stage using incredible video-mapped animations, 100,000 watts of Canada's PK sound system and the largest 3D projector in the world. This 18-and-over event boasted heavy dubstep, trap, and drum & bass sounds from Excision, Paper Diamond and Vaski, with enough explosive bass waves to cause nearby LA Live residents to go ballistic, literally.
The crowd housed everyone from older drum & bass fans and young kids mesmerized with dubstep to girls in fluffies and dubsex booty shorts. It was interesting, however, being at what is normally a rock-concert venue for a dubstep DJ. The intermission between DJs and time it took to set up the “Executioner” in a way killed the momentum of the party with its low bpms. Also only those who came early where granted “pit level” access; the rest had to squish behind on the floor level or upstairs in the theater seats. But that didn't stop everyone from raging hard and getting into the bass-heavy beats throughout the evening, igniting dance circles, mosh pits and make-out sessions in every corner.
]
Colorado's Paper Diamond incorporated dub remixes of popular songs and some of EDM's biggest hits remastered into dubstep and trap tracks with his own originals and edits. Displaying a limited amount of lasers and visuals, Paper Diamond warmed up the diverse crowd with songs such as his own “Can We Go Up,” “Sweet Nothing” by Calvin Harris and Florence Welch (the Diplo/Grandtheft Remix of course), and the Carnage remix of Hardwell's “Spaceman.” The sound system was turned up, but remained modest compared to the mind-blowing experience we would soon endure. We can only imagine the difficulty of opening for an act as big as Excision, who is known for taking things to the max when it comes to sound and quality of performance, but we think Vaski and Paper Diamond did a decent job at adding their own dimensions to the show.
Excision has been an active member in the bass community for almost a decade now, playing everything from dubstep, glitch hop, drum & bass, electro, and hip-hop. His seasoned stage presence and excellent track selections did not go unnoticed amidst the 420-square-foot production set-up he brought on tour. He created a live electronic music performance in which he simultaneously syncs the audio with video using groundbreaking technology and 100,000 watts of PK sound, which sends chills down your spine. Bringing a new meaning to the term “bass in your face,” he spliced everything from Crizzly's “Chain Hang Low” to his originals with Downlink such as “Headbanga,” which literally had the entire room headbanging away and throwing up the finger. Fittingly, this was similar to a metal rock meets electronica show–the future of bass music.
Personal Bias: Not a huge dub fan, but Excision was so mindblowing from start to finish that every track he played made us dance and let loose in perfect FTW fashion.
Crowd: A very young crowd, with lots of bass heads and what seemed like a 10-to-1 guy-to-girl ratio.
Overhead in the Crowd: “Isn't it funny how most big dubstep DJs are trying to outdo one another nowadays to see who can have the biggest, more bad-ass visuals and sound like who can have the biggest lifted truck?”
Random Notebook Dump: Not related at all, but when we came out of Club Nokia, there were helicopters and several cop cars surrounding the building in front of us holding a guy at gunpoint. Crazy!
Follow us on Twitter @OCWeeklyMusic and like us on Facebook at Heard Mentality.
