Having toured Asia this summer in support of Lady Gaga, Russian-German producer and DJ, Zedd is back on the road to promote the release of his début album, Clarity. It’s not everyday an artist gets to go on a world tour to support their début, however, thanks to the help of his platinum selling single ‘Clarity’ featuring the British singer Foxes, Zedd can do just that.
As it is, Zedd’s world tour is well under way, having completed the US based leg of the tour, I joined fans at Camden’s Electric Ballroom for his 37th gig of the tour, where he was joined by the Dutch DJ Dannic.
When Dannic began his set, the venue began to fill rapidly as fans flocked from the bar to the main room, unable to resist the big room mainstream “EDM” he began to play. From the very outset the entire crowd was moving, as Dannic played a really high energy intro to his set, hyping up the crowd and bouncing to and fro behind the decks. The view from the upper gallery was incredible, as the front half of the medium-sized club venue was rammed full, the sea of fans bouncing in unison to the beat as Dannic played tune after tune. It was a sight more common at a festival main stage than a club gig.
After Dannic’s set, Zedd’s new stage set-up was brought forward and revealed. Zedd, stood behind his decks atop a vast LED board, and to much anticipation began his set with a brief tease of ‘Shave It,’ overlaid with Matthew Koma’s vocals from their collaborative single, ‘Spectrum,’ before jumping full-on into his staple electro house sound. Fans were dancing hard to the heavy bass of Zedd’s older tracks, and a mash-up of ‘Slam The Door,‘ with Skrillex’s remix of ‘Don’t Slam The Cinema‘ stepped up proceedings a notch higher, really amping up the intensity of the crowd.
Not afraid to mix up the tempo and genre, Zedd surprised the crowd by briefly dropping a trap remix of Martin Garrix’s ‘Animals.’ Currently a huge club track, it’s safe to say this went down very well. Zedd introduced his new single, ‘Stay The Night,‘ featuring Paramore’s Hayley Williams towards the middle of his set to a great reception. The track has evidently pleased fans, as once again most of the crowd was jumping and chanting along energetically. Rather interestingly Zedd did not save his biggest commercial success, ‘Clarity,’ to close his set, and mixed it in to great applause much earlier.
Throughout, Zedd’s performance was accentuated by his new tour’s unique stage set-up, live graphics running on the giant LED board that stood before his booth, six powerful strobes and well timed bursts from co2 cannons. Though not as innovative or visually impressive as, say, Feed Me’s huge teeth rig or Skrillex’s motion cap suit, the lighting and animation provided by Zedd was certainly welcome and contributed to boosting the spectacle of his performance. It did unfortunately make Zedd rather hard to see whilst he was performing due to the lack of any specific lighting to illuminate him.
After building up tension, Zedd concluded his performance with his remix of Empire of The Sun’s most recent single, ‘Alive.’ This clearly went down well, as, subsequently fans could be heard chanting the chorus en masse as they left the venue. It seems worth noting that Zedd could have made the gig outstanding and especially memorable by an element of live performance. To conclude, a great show, comprising two well suited DJ sets, that complimented each other to brilliant effect and satisfied dance fans. Zedd was on top form on the decks, playing a great selection of fan favourites, however for a world tour, I was hoping for a little more spectacle.
