Gig review: Avicii, Glasgow

Swedish dance music producer Tim Bergling, aka Avicii, is one of the latest of a new generation of artists taking traditional club music into arena spaces, and this sold-out Saturday night mini-festival gave an indication why.

Avicii - Bellahouston Park, Glasgow

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A thousands-strong young crowd braved the chill in hotpants and flimsy fluorescent outfits, and it seems in this new era of megabucks dance superstars that dancing on upturned bins has taken over from dancing on tables as the show-off hedonist’s manoeuvre of choice.

The atmosphere was at once cataclysmic and good-natured, with the Avicii (and high-profile dance-pop support acts Tinie Tempah and Steve Aoki) live experience inspiring a far wilder response than your average stop-and-watch rock show. The old argument that one man with a table full of equipment doesn’t offer a great visual experience was blown away with a stunning light show that included a DJ booth which formed part of the huge backing video screen, giving the impression baseball-capped Bergling was floating amidst a trip round the rings of Saturn and probably the largest strobe effect ever witnessed.

His own music is a blend of pounding trance rhythms, momentarily retro chill-out in the vein of late-90s Balearic style and swooning, aspirational vocal recordings, including Seek Bromance, ID (Lay Me Down) and his signature Levels. These are commercial and somewhat formulaic, but Bergling’s live-mixed set is constructed very cannily to create a mini-festival experience, with liberal chunks of huge hits by Florence and the Machine, the Who and local heroes Primal Scream, Franz Ferdinand and the Fratellis. Regardless of qualms about his style, it made for a fun show packed with firework and pyrotechnic cues.