Gig review: Skrillex, Edinburgh Corn Exchange

BY THE dozen, young men learned the credo of getting their tops off as both a gesture of appreciation and a necessary means of countering the boiling atmosphere, showing off tattoos in the dim light.

The floor was slick with spilled pints and girls with tangled hair and running mascara clambered on to friends’ shoulders amidst a forest of raised arms. Every teenager should let themselves go to music so loud and bass-driven it makes noses itch at the earliest opportunity, and Skrillex – 24-year-old former punk musician Sonny John Moore – is the current flavour of a generation in that respect.

Of course, the parents of many of those in attendance might also have danced to earthquake-loud electronic music, so perhaps Skrillex’ shtick isn’t as divisive as those artists who have preceded him – although his look, an emo-friendly equivalent of Placebo’s Brian Molko, isn’t that of your regular rave boffin. Against an admittedly spectacular backdrop of widescreen console game visuals, gushing smoke jets and probing laser lights, he dished out sounds from a scaffold-mounted set of equipment which recalled the Prodigy without the free party political edge of their time, Metalheadz without the alarming shock of drum ’n’ bass as the new, or Pendulum without the sense of being first to cross over on an international scale.

Amidst the chipmunk vocals and crunching dubstep bass there were forays into reggae with an edit of Damian Marley’s Welcome to Jamrock and clubby rap with Fatman Scoop’s dimly-remembered Be Faithful. It felt, far from being rebel music, like an utterly commercial venture, but a frenzied initiation for his young fans nonetheless.

Rating: ****