Thumping bass, a sea of arms bobbing up and down like a buoy in a hurricane, unintelligible screams, and enough lights to make Las Vegas look dim at night - these are the phenomena that took the Downtown Mall by storm when Derek Smith, aka Pretty Lights, performed at the nTelos Wireless Pavilion Sept. 21. By the time "Finally Moving," one of Pretty Lights' most popular songs, came on as an encore, one could argue that Charlottesville was hit with another earthquake. Once "Finally Moving," which samples from "Something's Got a Hold On Me" by Etta James, was over, the air was wet with sweat - and surely tears from the diehard Pretty Lights fans. The sense of unapologetic emotional intensity emanating from the crowd was more than palpable. Without a doubt, no one who attended the concert regretted the ringing in his ears the next morning.
Despite the fact that critics of electronic and dubstep music would call Pretty Lights "just noise," the concert was anything but. Pulling off a dubstep concert requires tactical skill and grace, both of which Pretty Lights possesses. It is a subtle art to gauge the emotions of the audience, and like any other live concert artist, to placate the listeners' needs in the best way possible. There was a healthy mix in the Pretty Lights set list between smooth electronic elements of hip-hop and funky samples. Radiohead, John Denver and Kanye West all made appearances via remixes throughout the concert, adding an edge of familiarity as Smith let loose his music in front of a sea of artificial stars decorating the back of the pavilion. But what hit the crowd hardest, what was overwhelmingly performed best, and what the majority of the crowd desired most, was the dubstep. Pretty Lights' style of dubstep consists of heavy amounts of bass, steady beats, choppy, frequent samples and of course, the drop. For those unfamiliar with the genre, dubstep songs build up to a plateau whereupon the bass comes in suddenly and at its loudest. It is at this point that you will most likely catch a listener in the act of "raging."
Far from its literal definition of anger, to "rage" connotes excessive partying, and is heavily connected to electronic and dubstep music. For many artists, dubstep has the sole function of existing to promote a rave-type party; however, Pretty Lights is not one of them. Pretty Lights is all about the music
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