Pretty Lights Electric Zoo 2012 Review

By Shikhar

Even though Pretty Lights is playing at the Garden in Boston for Halloween, it was not enough to keep me from seeing his complete set at Zoo (it’s just a good rule of thumb most people should follow: Nighttime + festival closing + Pretty lights =  DO NOT MISS, well maybe for Daft Punk).

The main stage was nowhere close to empty yet not so packed that you could not move a muscle.  The perfect formula for what I like best. I decided to observe the opening of the set from the grass right outside of main stage and soaked in his awesome setup in its entirety. Pretty Lights slowed the entire momentum down to that of hip hop and hit the crowd hard with his vocal samplers combined with rough hard hitting tones.

Let me take this space to just mention my growing admiration for Pretty Lights fans, people who love pretty lights are fanatically in love with him and that passion just oozes out on the floor when Pretty Lights, aka Derek Vincent Smith, takes the stage.

When he dropped Total Fascination the crowd’s reaction was priceless, it literally looked as if a 10,000 volt current ran through the veins of every single person in attendance. No one bothered to remember how tired they were at 10pm after raging since 1pm, everyone just jumped, twisted, and gyrated their body to the beats and sang along. The only thing that was equally good as the music Derek was spitting out, was the crazy light show going on. Instead of the regular strobes and led’s shooting at the crowd, Pretty Lights was wowing audiences with his signature shapes and views of cities, skyscrapers and lasers, which formed a cloud over the crowd.

He kept going for the majority of the hour non-stop with other hits that included ‘still night’ and ‘finally moving’ with occasional shout outs to New York and Electric Zoo. However, the best part of the night was at the very end when he just stopped the music and had a heart to heart with the fans.  Derek asked every one if he should hit the Zoo with another song and boy did he HIT them with a song. Music cuts back in with the intro to ‘I know the truth’ and the entire crowd, with yours truly included, literally lost their mind. Everyone sang along to the vocals and that howl before the drop was one of the loudest I’ve heard live in person at a show.

The show was everything I had imagined a perfect Pretty Lights would be like, now I am pumped to see him again in Boston!

Read our full Electric Zoo Day 1 Review here