On April 27, 2016, The Chainsmokers and Kip Chapman performed at East Campus Arena, hosted by UPAC Concerts.
House music and electro have surged in popularity in recent years; the genre is great for parties and turning the energy level up a bit. Artists such as Dillon Francis, Don Diablo, Dash Berlin, and of course, The Chainsmokers, make it onto playlists regularly. Having a great set of speakers helps when listening to this kind of music, but there is the next best thing: concerts. Festivals such as Ultra Music Festival and Electric Zoo are huge, multiple-day ordeals which have any kind of electro music the heart desires and are an amazing time. Actually, it is probably worth noting that if you can’t purchase speakers, concert tickets are accordingly expensive.
A fantastic point to note about live sets are the different styles the artists take in their originals and even covers. With electronic music especially, DJs can mix well-known songs, sounding just as good as, if not better than, the original. That’s what I love about the genre—how creative the DJs can be with pre-existing material.
Kip Chapman began with his set at 8 pm. Hailing from New York City, Chapman is a DJ who demonstrated different electro elements during his performance. His combination of dubstep, house, trap, and EDM together made for a smooth hour-long mix. The set started off with a remix of “Heartbit” by Pegboard Nerds, which included a hard dubstep drop. Later in the show, he made a more progressive take on “Deep Down Low” by Valentino Khan, which was followed immediately by an uptempo mix of “One Dance” by Drake, his second single off of Views. About 40 minutes in, Chapman’s EDM take on “CoCo” by O.T. Genasis was hilariously received by the RPI crowd. The final mix was Axwell /\ Ingrosso’s “Sun Is Shining” into a rolling beat which ended the opening set. For the full RPI mix, check out his soundcloud at http://soundcloud.com/kipchapman.
The Chainsmokers came on promptly after Chapman, to a cheering crowd. Also from New York, N.Y, Andrew Taggart and Alex Pall have seen a meteoric rise to fame with their song, “#Selfie,” hitting number one in the US Dance charts in 2014, which they unfortunately did not play at the concert. Two years later, they are still widely popular, with an official album in 2015 and having regularly toured at UMF since 2014. Earlier this year, they played on the worldwide stage at UMF and gave a similar setlist.
Although the music started clipping out halfway through the set, the duo figured it out and adjusted their music accordingly and it was not a problem for the rest of the show. In classic DJ fashion, the duo gave fantastic remixes of “Under the Bridge” by the Red Hot Chili Peppers, “Rather Be” by Clean Bandit, “7 Years” by Lukas Graham, and “Love Yourself” by Justin Bieber. They also added a small sample of “Circle of Life” from the Lion King. Adding a little variety to their performance, they slipped in “Scary Monsters and Nice Sprites” by Skrillex; a nice little blast from 2010’s past. Since I love house, especially bass heavy house, I lit up when I heard “Heaven” by Drezo, which was also featured on Dillion Francis’ Diplo & Friends Mix under his deep house alias, DJ Hanzel.
From their own music, they also played “Don’t Let Me Down”, “Roses”, “Kanye”, and “Split (Only U)” with Tiesto. Other than the small audio hiccup midway through the show, the set had seamless transitions between songs and really did a great job in riling Ol’ RPI.
Thanks to UPAC Concerts for organizing this monster of an event, and Chainsmokers and Kip Chapman for coming out to perform.