Take me to your leader

Skrillex got the hydraulic spaceship for his DJ booth, so Boys Noize got the gigantic evil skull. I would love to have been a fly on the wall in THAT meeting. This was the Boys Noize “Live” set, which BN, a.k.a. Alexander Ridha, has previously explained as meaning he will only play his own, original music. In a giant skull-shaped DJ booth. Where the eyes light up. Or to put it another way, this type of “live” set is different and presumably value-added when compared to just a Boys Noize “DJ set”.

Whatever it was at the Red Marquee Saturday night — and well yeah, we all know it was techno — it was fun as hell, even though it happened a little too early, starting at 9:30pm, before the club kids are really ready to go out. But practically speaking, as far as the “live” thing goes, I am not really sure I see the difference. I mean, Skrillex didn’t bother to put “Live” in parenthesis after his name on the official lineup. But then again, he is Skrillex. He doesn’t need to. And he still gets a hydraulic spaceship.

There were other subtle things, and perhaps being “live” entailed them. The music wasn’t completely non-stop. There were spots where Ridha left the crowd to ponder, perhaps, how awesome that beat just was. He featured a lot of big tracks off his new album, Out of the Black, like “What You Want” and “XTC”. He manipulated the music live, actively doing the things DJs do. It was all very fresh and very Boys Noize. But we expected that anyway.