Yesterday I was confronted with a series of hard hitting questions when making my plans for the evening : Do you enjoy music where the only real dance move looks like you are having a minor seizure? What about random hip hop breaks? Are you remotely attracted to anyone who resembles Eminem? Would you shriek if a DJ gave you a birthday shout out? How about neon, does this tickle your pickle? Since I have answered yes to more than one of these questions, there was only one place you could find me last night - Privilege for Mass Bass.
My first time inside the main room at Privilege, I was of course taken back by its size. If there is one thing thing all of us music heads can agree upon, Privilege is monstrous. If a nasty storm ever blew through Ibiza, this is definitely the place we would all go to take shelter… and quite possibly live comfortably for the rest of our lives. Pretty Lights was on stage, and just as his name suggests he was sending out strong visual elements into the crowd which were slowly navigating through this massive venue. Continuous hard hitting drops hit us with a blunt force, taking us into a ground shaking evening of hard thumping bass. Derek Smith, the producer and sole creative force behind Pretty Lights has a recognizable touch to his tracks. A weathered crackle of vintage vinyl lingers through his samples as he drowns out the bass and takes us into a more soulful part of a record. A particularly funky moment of the evening was during Up & Down I Go which features the vocal sample from Express by B.T. which he then mixed with All Of The Lights by Kanye West making a relatively obscure pairing. Tickling the crowd with everything from funk and soul to dub step, hip hop and electronica, Smith continued to push his creative boundaries during the second half of his set. Another highlight was dubby rendition of Pink Floyd’s Time that he melted seamlessly with Bass Cannon by Bassnectar.
Looking around I felt like I was being taken back to one of my very first raves. Creatures of the night ran wild on the dance floor, proudly owning their true candy raver attire: neon face masks, neon shoe laces, neon tank tops, neon arm candy and neon, did I mention there was lots of neon? It was blinding.
The buzzing bass kept rolling when Flux Pavilion took over the decks. Cutting out even the slightest notes of soul, he kicked things off with a dirty rendition of the vocal hook from Knuck If You Buck by Crime Mob. The hair raising, head-haunting fire behind his movements of slow melancholic bass paired nicely with his more hard hitting cuts. A shockwave of energy pulsated throughout the crowd when dropping I Can’t Stop, which followed with a roar of cheers. At times, the beats were numbingly redundant - particularly in the second half of the set - where he seemed to check out of his performance as he played a few of that same tracks Pretty Lights had just played moments before. The break dancers carried the second half of his act when they reappeared back on stage. This time massive tv screens were worn as masks, sending the crowds head’s into a spinning into a vortex of delirium. Confetti cannons shot off during his remix of DJ Fresh’s chart topping track Gold Dust, which I have to admit, I do know all the words to… all nine of them.
WORDS | Sara McNutt PHOTOGRAPHY | Mass Bass
