Let’s not bury the lede — Skrillex’s set on the Green Stage concluded with the American producer joining Yoshiki of legendary Japanese metal band X Japan in a duet. It was a genuine once-in-a-lifetime moment…but let’s save that for later.

Sonny Moore’s Saturday night set at times felt like pure spectacle, 21st-century time capsule and Mad Max: Fury Road. As is the case with most artists lumped into the “EDM” tag, this show was best experienced in the heart of the pit and surrounded by diehards. And so I waded deep into Skrillex country 15 minutes before his set started, watching the red countdown clock tick down from five minutes to zero.

Most immediately, Skrillex destroys the idea of genre over the course of one of his sets. This isn’t a new realization — I wrote basically the same thing back in 2013, when Skrillex took to the White Stage in a space-ship-shaped stage that transformed into a robot midway through. But if felt far more pronounced in 2018, as he zig-zagged from his own bass freakouts to a roughnecked remix of Migos’ “Bad And Boujee” to a rework of the Vengaboys’ “We Like To Party” for God’s sake. It’s the perfect reflection of music consumption in the 2010s, when the YouTube recommend list can take you on unexpected journeys and creators try out all sorts of styles for kicks.

Yet watching this in 2018 also placed the whole set in amber as Skrillex ran through some of this century’s biggest songs. Over 90 minutes he grazed 50 Cent, Justin Bieber, Lil’ Pump, Rihanna, Avicii, 2 Chainz, KARA (well, at least I heard the “1234567” from “Mister”) and much more. A similar idea emerged five years ago, but back then it felt like a snapshot of what was to come. Now, it came off like archiving, a chance to remind “oh yeah, Rick Ross” and more unexpected moments of nostalgia. At one point, Skrillex said “this is Fuji Rock, right?” before playing A System Of A Down’s “Chop Suey!” This transported me back to pre-high school MTV binge sessions like nothing else, and it was nice sharing that with a bunch of other people losing it to early Aughts memories (and for the younger folks in attendance, no worries — they had a Drake meme to project on screen!).

For every nostalgic dip into TRL circa 2001, there was a moment to make you stare around and try to make sense of what was going on. Flames shot out of the stage, lasers blasted off into the distance, Skrillex leapt off his table like Tony Hawk and at one point waved a Japanese flag in the air while a snippet of LMFAO’s “Shots” played. Somebody kept throwing Skrillex t-shirts and towels into the audience like we were between quarters of an NBA game. Midway through he brought out what appeared to be a biggie-sized family to teach us a dance “popular in Europe” (source?????) where you shuffle eight steps to the left and then eight steps to the right.

It got weird, but the energy Skrillex brought to the whole performance smoothed out any of the stranger stretches and resulted in one of the more flat-out fun sets of Fuji Rock 2018 (well, at least for those up front — I’m trying to imagine the families in the back, toughing out the rain, trying to make sense of hyper-kinetic reggae mutations). It was the right mix of pop and rap remixes, throwback dance jams and Skrillex’s own original rave outs (“Bangarang,” “Kyoto,” “Would You Ever”). As a blast of pure energy, little came close to matching it on the Green Stage.

And yeah, back to the real news hooks — after stepping away for five minutes, Skrillex came out clutching a white guitar to join celebrated Japanese artist Yoshiki for a duet. Yoshiki first played piano while Skrillex thrashed away, and then Yoshiki wandered over to a drum set (removing his shirt) to smash away alongside a remix of Skrillex’s own “Cinema.” It was a surreal sight, but isn’t that what a big festival is all about? Afterwards, the two embraced and Yoshiki screamed “thank you, Skrillex!”