Courtesy of Michela Fossati-Bellani, Kevin Anderson (1/2 of the DJ duo Gostu Ongeslis, playing in the Legit Lounge at Avalon)

Even though my last live music experience was the Electric Daisy Carnival in Las Vegas, Designer Drugs’ set left just a little to be desired.  For the most part, although their fans seemed satisfied, Designer Drugs played predictable tracks from Skrillex to Afrojack to David Guetta.

As soon as I heard the first note for Skrillex’s Scary Monsters and Nice Sprites track I hoped they would bust out one of the recent remixes to that song. Instead they dropped the original, which is still a cool track with bipolar rhythm that begins with an uplifting escalation of light and pretty sounds from a male voice and drops heavily into a cacophony of bass and elephantesk noises. If you didn’t already know, the drop comes after the sample from his youtube video here.

The duo was, however, quite skilled in keeping the crowd (and themselves) high energy throughout their set. Their secret recipe to get their fans jumping was one guy jumping on the DJ table and screaming one of two phrases, “get your F***ing hands up!” or, “Make some F***ing Noise!” which was periodically screamed on several occasions. Their fans complied. 

A few things did strike me as unusual and pretty funny. First off the most exciting part of the night had little to do with the club or house music. Designer Drugs played Nirvana’s “Smells Like Teen Spirit” and the crowd automatically turned into rock fans, mildly moshing and rocking out. I fortunately got to get up-close and personal with Michael Vincent Patrick as he took a stage dive onto me. (I caught him on tape while he jumped onto me so watch the video at the bottom to see for yourself)

Second, I was happy and surprised by the relatively pleasant fans and perfectly crowded venue. I am not sure if this was due to a lower ingress demand or if the promoters capped the capacity at a lower number of people, but it worked. In the past, Control nights seemed to attract sleazier kids packed like canned sardines.

Another pleasant surprise caught me as I was passing through the Legit Lounge on the front left side of the venue. I caught a part of Gostu Ongeslis (pronounced gotchu on guest list) spinning some jungle-y, at times funky tech-house tunes. Gostu Ongeslis is usually composed of two cool DJs, Kevin Anderson and William Miller.

Even with only half of the team, Anderson played the most intriguing tracks of the night like David Jones’ track “Klappy,” which is a super lounge-y summer track that busts out some happy violin and later guitar only to lead you back into a somewhat trance-y tech house state of mind. 

Overall the club was enjoyable and although, for the most part, the tunes may have been predicable, the night brought many pleasant surprises and I look forward to my next Avalon excursion.

Reach Michela Fossati-Bellani here