Nicky Romero at Electric Zoo 2012: another day, another awesome DJ set
When making a list of dance musicians who have had a ridiculous year, it’s impossible to leave out Nicky Romero. A DJ and producer of just three years, he has already cemented his position on major festival lineups and in most of our iTunes libraries. He got his big break with “Flash” just over a year ago, and ever since then, he’s been cranking out quality production after quality production, rapidly taking the scene by storm. Well, he played the Electric Zoo main stage this year, delivering a set in the early afternoon that had the crowd fully attentive and fully bonkers the entire time.
Nicky generally stuck to his own productions for most of the set, peppering in upcoming and unreleased tracks just when the crowd thought they had a grasp on the music. He opened with “Toulouse,” “Generation 303,” and “Wild One Two,” before his upcoming collaboration with Calvin Harris, “Iron.” Fun fact: “Iron” is the first track Calvin Harris has ever recorded a vocal for that he didn’t also produce as well.
Deniz Koyu’s obligatory festival banger of 2012, “Bong,” was mashed with “Personal Jesus,” and then the German’s “Spectrum” remix got its moment. “Sparks,” “Here We Go,” and “I Don’t Like You” were also all thrown into the mix. It was John Dahlback’s upcoming track “Zeus” that brought a totally different vibe to the set, and caused me to uncontrollably shout emphatic “woo!”s. (Listen to the track below to get it.)
A new Michael Weermets track called “Bounce” was bootlegged with Chuckie / Promiseland’s “Breaking Up” vocal and played ahead of its upcoming release on Nicky’s Protocol label. He also played his track with Nervo, “Like Home,” and “Metropolis.”
The crowd went crazy when he played Tommy Trash and Sebastian Ingrosso’s “Reload,” and he followed that up with an unreleased Hard Rock Sofa & Swanky Tunes remix of “Lets Go.” That quickly faded away, only for the earnest piano chords of Swedish House Mafia’s “Don’t You Worry Child,” which I surprisingly only heard once the entire day. He finished with his and ZROQ’s ultra-hard “WTF?!” track, which was given the “We Are Your Friends” treatment, just as that special touch to close out the set.
Nicky’s set was a very solid combination of his biggest tracks with unreleased gems from friends like Tommy Trash, Swanky Tunes & Hard Rock Sofa, and his own Protocol Recordings record label. He also debuted a number of new productions that proves he isn’t sitting still for a moment. Nicky delivered another quality performance for the New York crowd — hopefully he’ll be back to do it again soon.
i’m not even trying to talk shit or hate.. but were we watching the same DJ? my best bud is a fan and was his birthday so he dragged me out to the main stage for this. the guy didn’t use headphones the entire time! he just lowered the volume down on one CDJ and up on the other.
he’d just twist a random knob with his hands in the air .. yet i didnt’ hear any FX from what he was “doing”. more like smoke and mirrors than anything. caught a little hardwell after him and his set seemed to have more character at least. some of romero’s tracks are pretty good but i was almost disrespected by what he was doing on stage.
maybe i just got spoiled later on in the night when luciano had 4 CDJs going on at once and mixing instruments from 3-4 songs at the same time and essentially producing music on the spot.
anyway – i think nicky is another case of really good producer who still has to learn how to DJ. great potential though – love the drums on all of his stuff.
cliche deep / minimal house douche bag who thinks everything prog is below them
cliche bigroom / brostep douche bag who thinks anyone who doesn’t like prog is below them
I saw a video of him in the studio where he said he was recording his live sets :
He’s right, I saw Nicky Romero when he was still starting out at Pacha and he wasn’t impressive then either. His tracklisting was beyond mainstream, he’s improved a little bit now and has some great productions but as a DJ he’s nothing to go crazy over. I walked past his set to see if I should give him another chance but I was like nah, Norin & Rad were too much fun. No idea what this website has for him or even Calvin.
I dj-ed with nicky 1,5 years ago. as i am intro scratching and tricks and stuff i asked if he could do so and he did. he is technically very skilled but he doesnt like to take risks (like for example, LBL) so you get a more “standard” set.
i’m seriously a huge fan of nicky but there wasn’t a single unexpected moment in his set. was probably the most boring set of the day. mat zo, luciano, dillon francis, & andrew bayer blew my mind
From that picture it looks like he MAY only have a USB even hooked up on the far left
i love all genres on an equal level. im actually a huge luciano fan and maya jane coles was one of my favorite sets yesterday. but i give credit to each performer for their different styles. i dont shit on prog djs for not having 4 turntables playing different tracks at the same time because that wouldnt make sense for the style. with minimal music DJs do that. for progressive, DJs dont. its a different style of music. but i definitely do not think anyone who doesnt like prog is below me. and i dont even know what brostep is
i loved nicky’s set , so much energy and passion . nicky plays his own music . you should guy the guy credit for playing track after track of songs he’s produced himself. if you saw the crowd, they were going nuts to his set and he played about 4 new tunes. i saw exactly what i came for and huge nicky romero set .
it’s not mainstream, he’s playing his own songs . if you classify his music as mainstream then maybe he’s not the artist for you .
i didn’t just post to bash him – i gave him credit where i think he deserved. he produces some real gems and is extremely young which means he has plenty of time to master the craft and get better and better.
that being said, i just wasn’t impressed by his DJing. i find it underwhelming when the set you play is already set up and you just pretend to twist some knobs to make it look more authentic.
prog is lots of fun but only for a limited period of time – you can only jump around and mosh to “wtf” “tolouse” etc for so long. some of the drops are nice and heavy but after a while it’s more of a rock concert than a dance floor. i’m not saying i’m the coolest guy on the block because i like luciano, i’m just saying i can actually dance nonstop to his music. it’s a journey – he takes me up and down and round and round. and you don’t even realize it because you’re so intertwined with the music. that’s pretty special if you ask me.
FYI you only need 1 USB. They have a cable that connects all the CDJs and lets them all play music from 1 USB drive. I don’t know many people that use more than 1, because it’s a pain in the ass to bring 4 different USB drives for no reason.
i hear you on the point about him producing what he plays. but i still say that there was barely anything unique about his set. no risk-taking. other people played nickys music (flash, toulouse, gen 303) in a much more exciting way during the weekend.
This is the right kind of criticism. Although I heard from some people that they were disappointed in Luciano’s set.
How much did Nicky Romero pay you to have this article posted?
For me, I would like to see some sort of turntablism, or deconstructing your own original tracks and reconstruct them lie. You can have a drum machine/drumsticks, a keyboard or other electric musical instrument, load up a huge library of additional samples and work them whatever the original piece was and completely deconstruct it and turn it into something that the crowd will remember that day.
Keep in mind, guys like DJ Shadow started in the late 80s/early 90s and Nicky Romero has only been DJing for 3 years. Nicky has a LONG career ahead of him provided he sticks with DJing for a bit longer.
Very surprise by this post. While i wasn’t at Electric Zoo, I did see Nicky a few weeks ago in Toronto at Veld. I was not impressed by his set at all. Well, at least not by his DJin’. All I heard were the standard Beatport top 20 songs. I like Nicky as a producer, but as mentioned earlier he has a lot to learn about DJing. He vastly needs to improve his song selection and mixing abilities.