Madeon
Yost Theater
7/22/12
As a Sunday night crowd in SanTana crowd chanted Madeon's name with the strength of a Roman legion, the underage French DJ looked out onto the the Yost Theater from the stage at the scene he'd created. Raising one hand to the sky, he let the tense vocal line from “The Night Out” drop into a bass-filled explosion with confetti blanketing the air, followed by beams of green and blue lasers and glittery reflections from spinning disco balls.
The show, announced in late June as a celebration of the Yost's one year anniversary, drew a full house of fans eager to get a taste of the hype surrounding the eclectic style of the 18-year-old EDM prodigy. Originally discovered on You Tube for a homemade, 39-song mash-up titled “Pop Culture,” his video performance garnered12 million views and launched his career. Not only does Madeon headline now, he was apart of Live Nation's “I Love This City” tour featureing Skrillex and Tiesto, as well as this summer's North American EDM tour, Identity Festival playing along side Eric Prydz, Arty and more.
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The show itself was a major grab for the San Diego-based LED, who recently replaced L.A. company Giant as promoters at the venue. So far, this show proved that this was a match made in techno heaven. For once Costa Mesa's Sutra, along with Identity management Group, didn't manage to grab Madeon first.
The promoters and the artist put on a quality production as fireworks-themed LED logos blared red, green, orange and blue behind the doe-eyed selector. Fog blasted into the crowd with confetti flying everywhere. Anxious from all the action, some kid in the crowd tried to pull a stunt by jumping on stage to grab a bag of confetti and throw it in the air. Luck for him, he managed to jump back into the crowd's arms and surfed to freedom, away from an angry security guard.
The style of the teenage Frenchman was pretty all much over the place, even though the transitions were well-polished from song to song. He used Nero's “Me and You” at a slowed down tempo to segue into an electro banger. Despite the energy in the crowd, he took things a little too far by prematurely playing Calvin Harris' “Feel So Close” — a song that is almost as cliche as Jersey Shore fist pumping at this point. The least he could have done was use his typical disco back beat to mix things up a bit. He then transferred into another overplayed transition song, Skrillex's “Breaking a Sweat”. What saved his set from being another EDM Top 40 mashup, was when he dropped a moombathon rendition of Jay-Z's “99 Problems.”
Towards the end of the set, Madeon showed some impressive versatility, shifting from electro to moombathon, and then a trance-inspired version of Deadmau5's “The Veldt” and “Language” by Porter Robinson. The crowd kept their energy as he brought back his style of electro disco and original hit “Icarus.” His last round of ammo included a rapid fire mix of the Killers' “Mr. Brightside,” Deadmau5's “Raise Your Weapon”, Dada Life's “Kick Out Epic Motherfucker”, Blur's iconic 90s joint “Woo Hoo” and Knife Party's “Internet Friends.”
Something tells us he'll probably have a few more of those after last night's performance.
Critics Bias: I'm a true believer with a DJ sticking to one genre and a slight change of pace to make things interesting. Madeon changed my opinion and really enjoyed his set.
The Crowd:
EDM crossover hipsters, hipsters, a wannabe raver and more hipsters.
Setbacks
: Did the opening DJs not read our article on
Codes of Conduct for Opening DJs? We won't name any names this time, but their was still an over abundance of bangers and high-energy attention whoring going on before Madeon's set that made the early part of the show feel like amateur hour.
Random notebook dump: 1.) A girl threw up on her hand in front of the bar. 2.) Outside after the show a random person asked everyone “Are you ready?” while holding a glow stick and spotify playing on his phone in hand — clearly this guy found Molly. 3.) Finally, a couple were making out on the wet ground of the VIP Section–quite gross.
