For more pictures of the event visit Audible Imagery's facebook.
The Brad's, Chad's, and fishnet-clad raver girls were out in full force in Knoxville this past Father's day, June 19th. It turns out this show was the end of the first leg of Flux Pavilion and Doctor P's first ever American tour and Knoxville (amongst travelers from other states) thanked the two masters by giving them sold out attendance. The Valarium was decked out in a variety of cool decorations, including billowing white curtains, clear plastic pillow clouds with neon back-lights behind them and two odd orange eggs at the side of each stage that we'll get to later.
As the crowd slowly poured into the venue DJ Bassel got the music started and had some decent song selection. Next up regional favorites DJ Slink, Spooky Jones and Fast Nasty took to the stage with almost as much applause as Flux and Doctor P would later garner. Fast Nasty spoke into the mic claiming to have had no slept from the last four days from performing at the close by Dex Fest and requested that everyone in the venue, "Just get crazy."
Their set started off slow but picked up speed quickly. First Fast Nasty appeared to select out some tracks that steadily increased in bass. Next DJ Slink took over and continued to mix original production with other selections and brought the crowd into it's first true frenzy of the night. Finally Spooky Jones and Fast Nasty came back from underneath the curtain and worked the crowd crazy as Slink added voice effects and vinyl sounding scratches over their hot beats.
After a final song, they ended their set in timely fashion and Flux Pavilion came from under the curtain. The screens came to life with his strong logo and quite a few people in the crowd threw up the "FP" signs with their hands. After an initial simple beat Flux smoothly re-winded the track, introduced himself, and played the familiar beginning of "Bass Cannon". The crowd roared in agreement and he faded the track out so everyone in the audience could scream, "Hit the bass cannon kick it!" before bringing in the humongous drop. Two dumb girls squeezing past my crew ignorantly asked us who was playing and even after we told them one of them said, "When is Doctor P going to come on? People are starting to get mad." We pushed them away and continued to get down to Flux's amazing set.
Flux Pavilion had everyone in the palm of his hand the entire set and played banger after banger, mixing perfectly between tracks. Sometime during the set Flux played "Bass Head" which I myself am exhausted of, but the rest of the crowd loved it and if anything it was an ode to Bassnectar who seems to play "Gold Dust" all the time. By the time he dropped "Get Louder" the audience swelled to enormous size and a friend and I jokingly changed the lyrics to: "It's gonna get, it's gonna get, it's gonna get crowded." The white curtains on both sides of the stage turned out to be swings and two disco-esque white afro sporting girls swung to and fro to the beat. In the middle of the audience another white curtain dropped and a glitter covered dancer swung high in the air between two ropes and eventually got a huge applause as she expertly did the splits. Flux played a stellar set which also included "I Can't Stop" and his final song of course being "Gold Dust", which he re-winded the intro on, bringing the crowd into a maniacal state.
Doctor P came on to equal applause and grinned at the crowd. He began his set with "Star" and from there on out relentlessly beat the crowd senseless. He dropped every hard song under his belt including "Watch Out" and a few I had never heard before. Perhaps they were new songs by him, they seemed to have his sound attached to them. Neither Flux Pavilion nor Doctor P spoke into the mic much, if at all, which let all the music do the talking. Towards the end Doctor P dropped "Tetris" which might have had some of the loudest cheers from the audience. "Tetris" is almost to obnoxious for me to listen to alone, but at The Valarium it took on a new hardcore depth from the awesome sound system.
From within the bright orange eggs two girls wearing huge feather headdresses burst out shooting confetti cannons into the crowd, and still in the eggs green lasers were activated that quickly pulsed to the beat. During the last few songs Flux Pavilion popped back up and threw some of the inflatable pillows from the wall into the crowd. Doctor P was able to play one more song which turned out to be Nero's Innocence, an excellent last song. and despite the crowd all screaming for an encore the lights finally came on and everyone knew it was time to go. I walked out to the parking lot covered in sweat and beaming from the awesome sets I had witnessed that night.
If Flux Pavilion and Doctor P come near your city I can easily say that it's a must to attend! Out of the two sets Doctor P had the harder set, easily on par with the filth I had witnessed from past Excision and Datsik shows. In fact I heard him dropping a Datsik track once as I excused myself outside for some air. Flux Pavilion's set was gentler and with more "mainstream" sounds but this doesn't mean it wasn't as big or epic as Doctor P's. If anything it was more welcoming and in the future I can see him blowing up in America just as much as Bassnectar, or at least I think he deserves it. The two were great at mixing and put on quite the show, and after this tour I am sure the both of them will take note of their success and come back to America many times in the future.
Now here's the video recap, since I made it over 10 minutes long I was unable to do HD, however the sound quality is still great as far as most concert footage goes. Watch it in 480p quality.
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