Shelter Live - Atlanta, GA (09/29)
All right let’s take about the debut of the Shelter Live show in Atlanta.
VENUE: Beautiful old style theater with very high ceilings and a very wide stage. Security was top notch and I didn’t have a problem. Sound system was okay during PR&H, but too much bass when Robotaki and Fakear were on stage. Only disadvantage was standing on an incline the entire time, since the wide dance floor slopes.
CROWD: Extremely fantastic. The crowd was super excited from beginning to end. For me, a crowd can make or break a show. If you have a sour crowd from the beginning, it definitely dampens the experience. However, when I settled in the front row, everyone around me started to cheer enthusiastically in eager anticipation. Everyone collectively had been sporting Porter Robinson t-shirts, or were rapidly speaking about not realizing that Porter and Madeon were playing on stage together. This amplified the buzzing atmosphere. I was very pleased to have such a loud crowd for the kick off of a long, first time collaboration tour like this. At times the crowd would be singing louder than PR&H on stage, and this was especially predominant during Shelter and Sad Machine. The crowd went absolutely insane for Sad Machine.
ROBOTAKI: I was especially excited to hear him play a DJ set live after practically living on his SoundCloud/invading his Twitter for music links since he was announced as one of those artists opening the tour. His song choice was actually so perfect, and it was nice to feel a sense of sincerity in a DJ set instead of having just one single beat being played over and over again for an hour. His stage presence was also excellent, providing a very open atmosphere to an eager crowd who also cheered for him so loud, it was great. Everyone especially loved the edit (Dillon Francis’) of Daft Punk’s Harder, Faster, Stronger. His song rotation were good, everything flowed, and I think he’s a perfect fit for PR&H on this tour. He seems like a very humble fellow, so I know I’ll hear more great things from him on tour. (Small side note: this isn’t important, but he dresses VERY WELL. Lawd.)
FAKEAR: Literally sat on a bus while I was in New York and listened to his entire SoundCloud including his entire album. His set is euphoric, pure magic and very VERY mellow. He has more of a quieter stage performance, but he reminds me of a magician that just stands back and does his thing. His finger snapping to his music on stage was awesome, because it showed that he was off in his own little world and we were along for the ride. He didn’t say a word, just played, held up his hands in thanks, and departed. I prefer that, but after you’ve come off a high energy set like Robotaki’s, prepare to sit back and enjoy the magical wizardry that is Fakear. I felt like I was drifting away in a really pretty RPG game and was purposely getting stuck somewhere just so that I could listen to all the background music.
OVERALL: Loved them both. I think they are a perfect fit for this tour. I’m not going to make elaborate song descriptions and such. You guys can go to their pages and sit back and listen. Was really happy to say hello to Robotaki and introduce myself as the crazy woman who decided to go to more than half of the tour.
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PRODUCTION: Extremely MASSIVE. Okay so you have essentially two stages to the right and to the left. Right side is Porter’s side with all of his massive amounts of live stuff on it. (Keys, mic, drum kit, etc) Left is Hugo’s. he had a cymbal on stage from what I could tell. Behind them both, are two large video walls which illuminated them in low light and visuals. BEHIND both of them is a GIANT VIDEO WALL. This thing is CRAZY. From floor to ceiling this thing goes. Because of how giant this is, standing directly in the front row with a slightly higher stage is a big, fat NO. I learned this after I was standing in the front row my first hour into the live show. Couldn’t get the full effect of the light show because I was looking up its nose half of the time. If you want a flawless experience, please stand a few rows back or on a balcony. Not to say standing front is terrible. I had a fantastic time watching them work their gear on stage right up front. Also Porter seems to have more drum pads and Hugo has a bass station? I couldn’t fully tell. Help me production queens and kings! Also, photos will NEVER DO IT JUSTICE.
SHOW: HELLO 911? I’m going to need an ambulance or two because I was taken down pretty much five seconds in. I had multiple very secret (no longer secret) concerns leading up to this tour because I wasn’t fully sold on the rehearsal clip that was posted, and was afraid of how they were going to do this. But I knew that nothing is without meaning for these two, so that clip couldn’t hold a candle to what slammed me right in the face. I had Hugo’s words to me ringing in my head, “polished live show” and it couldn’t be more of a truthful flow of words. The two of them walked out together, hoping right up on their respected sides of the stage.
(Another reason why being up front was a little rough, my head kept going from right to left. ‘Who do I look at? What do I DO?’) The introduction consisted of Shelter, which ransacked my entire body with goosebumps right away because it was all redesigned for the live show. There was Shelter, but then there was the live edit of Shelter which completely blew my mind. If anyone is familiar with the updated Porter Robinson Worlds show, the introduction is done in a similar format. With just one single key of Shelter being played out with lights until it grows louder. Then you’re hit with this slow, gorgeous melody. I want to say an almost acoustic version of Shelter but not? It’s very hard to describe but it was ABSOLUTELY beautiful and knocked me completely off my feet. I can’t tell you how many times my mouth was on the floor and I had my hands clenched to my temples in shock. I must’ve looked absolutely crazy from the stage. Then it just goes into Shelter, and they were all lit up with glowing green visuals making them look like two moving silhouettes in a dream. Hugo nearly took me down all together with how he just belted out his vocals as if he’d been singing regularly his entire live.
Okay real talk, I love Hugo’s singing voice. I need him to do more of it because he may not realize it, but he sounds great. I am very proud of how far he came. In Adventure, I could barely hear him because of everything he’d put over his voice while singing. It was really distractive and I wasn’t a fan of it, so when he came out belting Shelter, oh GOD I was beyond proud of him for all of his hard work!
I don’t want to get too horribly in depth just yet about all of the live edits and combinations because I want to go to a few more tour dates first to get a feel of the flow of the show. But I will say this, everything from start to finish left me completely speechless. Everything I had thought about was flung right out the door, because I couldn’t tell what was coming from a mile away. My hands were shaking the entire time I was on the railing. There were a few things mixed into their live edits that I completely couldn’t recognize at all. (The edit before Imperium was one)
Also, the Sea of Voices new edit is actually one of my favorite thing in the sets. I could never really fully enjoy Sea of Voices live (the song is beautiful, but for personal reasons) but last night, it changed my perspective on it all together and it was as if I was reintroduced to the song. Pop Culture also got a small bit of a make over and it was mashed up with Say My Name. I just remember Hugo throwing up his arm and “SAY MY NAME” in the same white text being broadcast across the video walls and my mouth just going, “NO FUCKING WAY”.
I know a lot of time and energy was probably vested into what songs would work with what, but everything fit. It was like watching them connect moving parts of a puzzle. I hear the brief, but beautiful keys of Technicolor skirt through right after Say My Name and my eyes were wide and my heart perhaps skipped a beat.
Porter sung the lyrics for Beings, and that alone was beautiful. He too has improved on the vocal side pretty well. Home was redone with vocaloid vocals, and they managed to blow my mind again with the whole Fellow Feeling and Icarus combination. Nothing was either very Porter heavy or Hugo heavy. It was a balanced mash of the two of them and their creations, displayed as one unified creation. I’m sure they’ll make tweaks along the way, and there were no huge technical difficulties, but they pulled off an amazing first show.
I really can’t get over Pop Culture, Sea of Voices and the new Fresh Static Snow edit. Just EVERYTHING. I couldn’t take my eyes away. There wasn’t a whole lot of video content, but it did little to take away from the magical atmosphere that the show produced. I really wish I could transcribe everything I felt last night into valuable words, but there’s a lot buzzing in my head that I just cannot. Sort of like, “you just have to see it to believe it”.
Goodbye to a World’s visuals on their individual walls was great because it had the lyrics in English on Porter’s side and in Imperial on Hugo’s side. I kept pointing and losing my mind over it. I think this happened to me several times throughout the show. I completely lost track of time, and felt like I was being pulled into an electric world that was telling me a rapidly changing story.
Their charisma together is perfect. I’ve never seen two people compliment each other on stage as much as these two. I had seen these two perform many, many times individually, and their individual stage presences shined through but at the same time, they worked so well together. Both kept motioning to each other and smiling so brilliantly on stage that you could tell they were having a lot of fun. Hugo twirling around and smacking the cymbals with a drum stick was probably the cutest thing I’ve ever seen him do on stage. Also Porter’s massive drumming during Divinity was another one of my favorite moments from the show. JESUS Christ that was so good.
Albatros still made an appearance which I wasn’t expecting. Wedged in with Lionhearted, which I was so happy still made it into the show. It was one thing after another with very little breaks throughout the show, which was a good thing because it meant the flow of the show was never broken.
When they left the stage before the encore (Language and Shelter), people started to switch on their flashlights on their phone. So we all did it and soon the crowd was just a shining mass of tiny cheering stars. Porter saw this, had the hugest smile on his face and turned around to Hugo to motion to the crowd. They both walked to the center of the stage, and looked just so incredibly floored.
Language oddly brought me back to the very first couple of shows I’ve ever seen Porter play, and I was a confirmed emotional basket case for a while because my nostalgia was triggered, HARD. But overall I couldn’t ask for a better kick off date to set the tone for the rest of the tour. I couldn’t stop thinking about how much I wanted just to get up and go again, and my anticipation for the show in Michigan is off the charts right now.
But PR&H both are two of my favorite guys on this planet. Both on stage and off. I was so proud of them (I’ll say this numerous times) that I couldn’t stop staring in awe and smiling last night. I just wanted to hug them both and yell it from the rooftops about how PROUD I am of them and what they’re doing together. I’ll probably have a better write up like I said, after a few more shows but I wanted to write down some of my feelings ASAP to get them out.
I look forward to the Royal Oak show!
prguitarman
vaporwave
titsay
blakekathryn
annaxmalina
