Anton Zaslavski, a.k.a Zedd, has been riding a wave of fame ever since his album, Clarity, was released in October of 2012. As a relatively young electronic music producer (born in 1989), Zedd shows no signs of being green, as he has been producing music since 2009. While he’s known for producing mainly electro house and the ambiguous genre of complextro, he has also been experimenting with dubstep and newly popular subgenre, trap, as a remix framework.
His performance at BUKU was where Zedd’s strength and weakness arose. Unfortunately for the crowd, technical difficulties and sound quality were the first thing experienced by the masses. One thing to note: out of any performance in the Float Den, Zedd’s crowd was by far the largest. Perhaps that’s indicative of his draw and talent, and why he has dipped his finger into every genre out there.
Once his technical issues had been solved, he began his set with Flux Pavillion and a hype man on stage. Whether or not that was intentional from the beginning, we may never know; but it was quite an interesting sight to see.
For the brave electronic dance music fans that like to go for breadth, Zedd’s performance was fitting. It seemed as though he had a checklist of “The Ideal Electro Dubstep DJ set” and decided to nail it with one hundred percent accuracy. Drop the levels to let the crowd sing along with popular tracks? Check. Harlem Shake and Gangnam Style? Check. Cut the drops between every other song? Check.
He took interesting twists and turns with his music, jumping between house, electro, dubstep, and trap without any difficulty. While I’m not a fan of the latter two genres, that does not mean that I cannot appreciate trying to appeal to a wider fan base, nor can I ignore the talent it takes to actually mix between genres like those. He knew exactly what he was doing up there, both technically and in relation to the crowd. Once again, there was a reason he had filled the warehouse up unlike any of the previous performers.
If there was one downside to the entire performance, I would say that it was the lack of visuals. While he may have only been producing for four years (and who knows when his first live performance/DJ gig was), there was a severe lack of anything interesting going on with his visual setup. He used the standard stage lighting with strobe lights and some LED screens behind him, which granted were in sync with his music cues – but that’s the problem: it was standard. Perhaps I was just hyped up from the Flying Lotus performance earlier, but I think that it’s time DJs and producers accepted the fact that they’ve got to provide something interesting and new to look at while they’re focused on their turntables/monomer/Ableton setups.
Without question though, Zedd had no problem conducting the crowd like a true maestro – rising and falling with every melodic high or intense drop from the bass. If you have the opportunity to check him out next time he’s in town, don’t get Lost At Sea because you’ll truly regret missing it.
