Skrillex: The Mothership Tour at Koko, London

Why do people hate Skrillex so much? Is it because he's changed the face of dance music? Or because he’s pushed the levels of production to an insanely high levels; or, simply, because he looks like a 14 year old emo-kid with a penchant for bass rumblings? All of the above; pity for the haters then, as Skrillex’s Mothership Tour landed at its London stopover, where the name-dropped producer provided a full blown, bass-filled battle scene of screeches and unreal talking, screeching basslines. Non-stop, beat-driven ammunition poured out of the speakers for a good hour or so. One thing that can be said, for a DJ who claims to be at the fore front of ‘genreless’ music, it has to be said that everything sounded the same, and turned into a giant wall of sound. Still, it sounded awesome as Koko’s speaker system was pushed to its very limitations, struggling under the weight of Messer Skrillex’s bass timbres.
 
Flux Pavilion was awarded warm-up duties on this leg of the tour. Gradually and expertly switching from dubstep wobblers to hip-hop and drizzly g-funk wobblers, Flux set the tone perfectly for the one man juggernaut to grace the stage and do his thing. Flux even picked up the mic to sing along to some tracks - very karaoke like and slightly cheesy, but nonetheless it suited the fun and chaotic atmosphere to a tee.
 
The average age of the show was around 15-16 and resembled more of a rock show than club night or DJ set, the kids knew exactly what they wanted - hair brained, body punishing mosh pits. Full of friendly atmosphere, the crowd went off as the hottest new producer in the world opened with ‘My Name is Skrillex’, occasionally breaking into a full circle pit of chaotic bodies and limbs flailing in all manners of contorted angles as he worked his way through tracks such as 'Ruffneck (Full Flex)', 'Reptiles Theme', 'Scary Monsters and Silly Sprites' and as-yet unreleased tracks such as 'Voltage'. With all this intense behavior and arresting sound, it was a refreshing feeling to witness one of the most friendliest crowds to behold, mixing the heavyweight, futuristic ’dubstep’ with outrageous pop remixes and leading to room wide sing a long’s to his recent re-workings of Nero's'Promises', Benny Benassi's 'Cinema' and various other bottom heavy workouts. The fun was further exemplified by the drove of lookalikes roaming the venue, causing more than a couple of chuckles from this reporter.
 
After producing tunes for the likes of Korn (?), Mr Skrill is on an unstoppable trajectory - disappointing news to the dubstep underground die-hard contingent who think that the boy is nothing more than a commercial machine, destroying what is left of their much loved sound with ‘genreless music’. But, although he divides opinion on such a large scale,  it seems that Skrillex is a gateway drug for emo’s to come off metal music and move onto the dancefloor.