In one of the more unlikely live collaborations to come in recent memory, news of a Four Tet and Skrillex B2B set from the Eat Your Own Ears event at Camden Town’s intimate Underground (a heavy metal friendly venue whose recent bookings include “Ohio’s Blackened Heavy Metallers” SKELETONWITCH) made headlines in the wee hours of Easter’s morning after.
Neither Four Tet nor Skrillex are any strangers to collaboration, with the former having played with everyone from Floating Points to Jamie xx (recently unleashing a mid-year candidate for Essential Mix of the Year), and the latter touring the world with Diplo as the big room banger collective Jack U; but as soon as news of the event broke late last month, via Four Tet’s twitter page, the dance music world was in a buzz over what could potentially go down between the bass-heavy ambassador and the overlord of EDM, or whether or not it was an early April Fool’s Day prank.
Well, as most were mid-sleep (or mid-Easter celebration) Kieran Hebden and Sonny Moore did exactly what they set out to do, and from the look and sound of things, the night seemed to be unfold as quite the banger. “We’ve been internet friends for a while, but this is the first time we’ve met,” Skrillex yelled through the mic, and with a 3 hour set, following support from Champion, everything from grime and dubstep to garage and electro with tracks like Joy Orbison’s “Ellipsis” to Jack U’s “Take You There” emanated from the 500 person capacity venue’s soundsystem. In fact, the setlist was so diverse, one of the night’s highlights came about half way through when Skrillex dropped the theme music to, none other than, “The Lion King”, with another highlight being the Wu-Tang Clan’s C.R.E.AM. (Four Tet) mixed into Toto’s Africa (Skrillex) to close out the long holiday weekend.
Going track for track, allowing for juxtaposed mixing and sonic diversity, perhaps RA’s Editor in Chief Ryan Keeling put it best in his review of the event by saying, “Any supposed boundaries between underground and mainstream, between highbrow and lowbrow, had been temporarily melted.”
Unfortunately, there is no official live recording of the set but there are a handful of smartphone videos circulating around.
