I’m the type of person who can listen to the same song a million times and never get tired of it. Maybe that’s because I have shit memory, or just a high tolerance for the tedious built up from years of programming. Whatever the case, when I get obsessed with a particular style of music or artist I can pretty much stick to it for an entire year. That’s what happened with pretty lights – it’s weird to think that I’ve been bumping them almost daily for a year (of course with other awesomness mixed in too). By coincidence, I went to their show almost exactly one year after I discovered them.It was an absolutely amazing show.

I’m not one to go to raves, because I can’t stand the n-tss-n-tss-n-tss-n-tss happy, fluffy, talent-less music most people dance to there. But Pretty Lights has that filthy, gritty, hip-hopish sound I love. I was surprised that the environment was basically a rave – tons of naked girls, people on E, and all kinds of people having a good time. I don’t really dance – mostly just body rock and head nod – sigh, I’m so cool. I guess someone thought I was on E cause they started giving me a massage randomly at one point.

Anyway, Pretty Lights lives up to their name – the lighting at this show was almost as music. And speaking of the music, like the Bonobo Show, they also had live instruments up on stage playing the parts that would normally be samples. Of course they didn’t go quite as hard core as Bonobo with the live playing, but no matter: the music was intense. Pretty Lights sounds good at a conservative volume, sounds great a loud volume, but sounds like it was meant to be played at an ear-rupturing volume.

Check the videos below for a couple samples of live playing and epic color shows:

Here are a few screen shots of real life for your viewing pleasure:

February 24, 2014 at 8:18 pm | Music Articles