In the world of music blogging, it can be easy to lose perspective on what music is actually popular to the mainstream. Obviously everyone knows who Kanye West is (especially today), but where do people like Rusko fall? The average person might not even know what dubstep is, but to EDM kids, Rusko is king. Having seen him once before, at Electric Zoo, I knew what to expect from his set: thundering bass and out of control dancing, the crowd however was what I (foolishly) didn’t expect. I showed up exhausted to UHall on Sunday night and fell straight into a rave. Now I would expect that scene from a club in a warehouse district, or Randall’s Island, but in the middle of DC, it was just kind of weird. Drop that into a pretty small venue, and insanity ensues. I could have really used a thesaurus, because “insane” was the only word I could come up with to describe that evening. Hundreds of people (myself included) were soaked in sweat dancing wildly, and unable to distinguish their own heartbeats from the ribcage-shaking bass. Now don’t get me wrong, I love me some Rusko, and most of my gripes come from the choice of venue, but there are complaints nonetheless. The space was way too small (or perhaps the show was oversold), the crowd was way too young (it’s a strange moment when you feel old at the ripe age of 23), and the show started way too late for a Sunday (I left at 2am and Rusko was still going). At the risk of some backlash, I’m also going to go out on a limb and say that I think that Rusko is a much greater producer than he is a live DJ. There were definitely some stumbles and rough transitions throughout the set that maybe I wouldn’t have noticed if I was on ecstasy, but I wasn’t. All of this sounds like a huge rant against ravers, and it’s not to say that I didn’t enjoy myself regardless, but I think that given an appropriately sized space, even grumpy old me could have had room to breathe. Bonus: A remix of The Temper Trap that will have made reading this far worth it.

Soldier On (RUSKOS F’kin Seagull Remix) by The Temper Trap