Avicii - Santa Monica Civic Auditorium - 9/14/12

Brittany Nelson

Avicii
Santa Monica Civic Auditorium
9/14/12

See also: Avicii Performs in Santa Monica Tonight: Here's Our Interview

Better Than: the Sahara Tent at Coachella.

Avicii, the baby-faced boy king of the new EDM generation, brought the house down last night with a relentlessly aggressive set that found the floor of the Santa Monica Civic Auditorium bouncing with massive beats. The first of the Swedish producer's three night run of shows at the venue brought out a brightly dressed youth parade of fans, most of whom appeared to be roughly the same age as 22-year-old DJ and many of whom were dressed to impress in various incarnations of the standard EDM uniform: sequined skirts, tutus, tube dresses, tank tops on dudes, a few popped collar polos and jorts -- lots and lots of jorts.

With various pat downs, checkpoints and prevalent security, getting in wasn't dissimilar to entering a major music festival. But the kids didn't seem to mind handing over their water bottles, lighters and suspect packs of gum. In exchange, they had the opportunity to drink Red Bull and dance their asses off in the sweaty pit where most of the sold out crowd resided throughout the show.

Avicii, née Tim Bergling, began his set at 9:30 with a now signature mix of his own "Fade Into Darkness" and The Who's "Baba O'Reilly." And with that siren call of teenage wasteland, it was on. The nearly two hour set flowed from house to trance to darkly menacing elemental beats that verged on dub, without ever going grimy. Avicii's ultra-produced style is sleek, and his technical efficacy was clear in the richly layered melodies and massive sub-beats that launched a thousands fist pumps in the humid hot air. Avicii's show-closing megahit "Le7els" saw fans in the lobby literally dropping their nachos on the floor and rushing back inside the theater to sing along.

Brittany Nelson

It was bass that vibrated your whole body. The aural magnitude of the perpetually thrilling builds and drops would have been remarkable had Bergling played them from the top of a stack of milk crates. A strikingly sophisticated stage show, however, elevated the performance and made it clear why Avicii currently resides near the tip of the EDM-world pyramid.

The futuristic production, a collaboariton between Nocturne and Vidaroo, was a triumph of projection mapping, multi-colored directional lighting, lasers and assorted imagery. The focal point was a massive, plainly faced head, on which a perpetually shifting succession of galactic-inspired visuals were projected. At the top of this singular image stood Bergling, throwing down his set while doing a darling hand-raised shuffle dance as the show swirled around him. Really, in the sea of stage production, Bergling was often a nearly invisible afterthought, but him standing in the crown of a literally split open head made for a clear and appropriate metaphor: the shit was intended to blow your mind.