EDM.com was onsite to take in Skrillex, Fred again.. and Four Tet’s ineffable MSG rave, which will go down as one of dance music’s most historic moments.
“This doesn’t feel like real life.”
If there was any way at all to capture the collective sentiment of Saturday’s night historic concert at Madison Square Garden, it was those six decisive words, which seemingly couldn’t escape Skrillex’s lips all night.
And who could blame him? If you were standing atop a DJ booth alongside your best friends before a sea of 20,000 love-drunk fans, you’d want to soak it all in too. After all, none of this seemed possible just days ago, let alone amidst the doldrums of the pandemic.
EDM.com was onsite to take in the ineffable sights and sounds of Skrillex, Fred again.. and Four Tet’s once-in-a-lifetime MSG rave, which will go down as one of dance music’s most historic moments.
Marilyn Hue
Performing at the Garden is a touchstone for so many of the world’s biggest artists, with names like Elton John, Phish and Billy Joel adorning the rafters above. So far this decade, only two electronic acts (Swedish House Mafia and Kygo) have graced the iconic arena’s stage, backed by months of promotion and plenty of notice. This show, however, was announced just three days prior.
But the night was about more than marquee names and core-rattling drops. It was an homage to the people and the sounds that paved the way for an experience like this to even happen in the first place.
Ergo, those in attendance didn’t really need much to get going. After a week in which they endured an ad nauseam stream of palpitation-inducing rumors, surprise social media ticket drops and the soul-crushing “sold out” dead ends that followed mere minutes later, fans who came out the other side felt lucky to even breathe the same air as these three masterminds.
Skrillex, Fred again.. and Four Tet managed to completely dominate New York City’s music scene for an entire week. The MSG show, which sold out in just three minutes, was the culmination of a week which included two pop-up shows at the classic NYC clubs Good Room and Le Poisson Rouge, as well as a surprise DJ set live from a droptop school bus in the middle of Times Square.
Ask any dance music enthusiast in the city what they’d been up to last week and their answer is likely akin to a pressure cooker, wherein they frantically refreshed Instagram and Discord in hopes of snagging a ticket to the fabled Madison Square Garden. It’d been a stressful few days, but the “Pangbourne House Mafia” trio rewarded fans with five consecutive—and cathartic—hours of electronic music that spanned the gamut of their illustrious careers.
Where else could Excision and Wooli’s dubstep banger “Titans” and Taylor Swift’s ageless country-pop anthem “Love Story” not only be played alongside each other, but also elicit the same heart-pounding reaction? The list of callbacks to genre staples and nods to blossoming EDM stars alike is too long for any recap.
But we’ll try. There were countless crowd favorites, like U.K. breakout Hamdi’s “Skanka VIP,” a pulsing barrage of bass that harkens back to Skrillex’s early work. Another highlight came when the trio dropped ASDEK’s blistering remix of “Murdah” (by EDM.com Class of 2023 star Knock2), an electric bass house track that sent the crowd into an absolute frenzy.
What really ignited the night were drops of the three artists’ original music, only a hint of which was needed to send a throng of cellphones up into the air in unison. In these moments, you knew things were about to go ballistic.
Perhaps even better were their many interconnected collaborations. One only needs to listen to the frenetic production of “Rumble” or the hypnotic bass in “Jungle” to paint a picture of the songs’ live reactions at the Garden.
Skrillex put on a show, flexing his typically dominant stage presence while rinsing genre-defining tracks (yes, “Bangarang” still goes bananas in 2023) and quashing any lingering doubts about the ferocity of his long-awaited return to the forefront.
Quest For Fire, his scintillating new album, was featured heavily throughout the night. And from the reaction of the crowd every time he dropped one of its songs, you’d never have guessed that the full project was released just 48 hours prior. “RATATA,” a collaboration with Mr. Oizo and Missy Elliott, elicited a booming roar as the entire crowd chanted along to the hip-hop icon’s classic ad-libs from “Work It.” Meanwhile, Skrillex’s drop of “XENA” comprised a series of haunting buildups followed by a rushing cascade of bass on each drop.
QFF standout “Still Here (with the ones I came with)” offered a euphoric collage of shimmering synths and bursting percussion, and it was made even more special by Porter Robinson’s surprise appearance in the booth. To top it all off, Skrillex announced another brand new album, Don’t Get Too Close, had hit streaming platforms minutes prior—a fitting party favor for fans to bump on their treks back home.
Robinson wasn’t the only special guest. Fred again.. shocked us by bringing out Swedish House Mafia’s Sebastian Ingrosso for a spin of “Turn On The Lights again..,” last summer’s high-profile collaboration with Future and one of the many masterstrokes that catapulted Fred into the upper echelon of the electronic music scene.
Dropping several hits from his latest album, Actual Life 3, in addition to a number of throwbacks from its predecessor, Fred’s selections were nothing short of ingenious. From the melancholic undertones of “Bleu (better with time)” to the glittering synths of “Strong” (a collaboration with Romy of the xx), he offered an aching edge in contrast to the show’s many raucous bangers. The full weight of 20,000 voices—including Skrillex’s improvisational rendition over the mic—belting out the lyrics to “Delilah (pull me out of this)” truly put the incomparable event into perspective.
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While Skrillex acknowledged that he, Fred and Tet had come from “completely different backgrounds,” one thing was certain: they managed to make The City That Never Sleeps come to a grinding halt.
The rave was in a league of its own. And sadly we may never again see anything quite like it, according to Skrillex, who said a future reunion “might never happen again.” And in a fabled city known for its grandeur, the night will ripple through the minds and hearts of those both in and outside of the building for years to come.