Justin Charles

In a world where a new 18-year-old DJ prodigy springs up every other week, Dirty South feels almost like an elder statesman of the genre. He’s been producing progressive house bangers from Melbourne, Australia since 2005, creating monster hits and summer anthems in the years before it was necessary for Ultra Music Festival to be spread out over two weekends.

This past Saturday, October 20th, Dirty South brought his “City of Dreams Tour” to New York City’s Roseland Ballroom for a full night of dance music madness. Taking the stage around 1:00am, Dirty South kept the crowd dancing and the party moving until the wee hours of the morning, playing a set that felt slightly longer than the average headline spot. Mixing old hits with some of the latest flavors of the month, it is truly apparent how many huge dance songs Dirty South has been involved with. ‘Let It Go’, ‘How Soon Is Now’, ‘Open Your Heart’, ‘Phazing’, ‘Alive’ – I can go on and on. Huge remixes like Mike Snow’s ‘Silvia’ were definitely crowd pleasers. Brief teases of his megahit remix of The Temper Trap’s ‘Sweet Disposition’ were spread throughout the show to great reaction, before Dirty South closed the night by mashing the song up with MGMT’s ‘Kids’.

Interestingly, Dirty South recently discussed with his distaste for the huge visual experiences accompanying many EDM shows. “I think that’s getting a little tiring, the LED walls and all that…I would love to see it go back to just playing the music and people responding to music, rather than LED shows, fireworks, smoke machines and all that.”

Reading that quote after experiencing Dirty South’s set on Saturday is almost comical. Huge LED screens were displayed all over the stage. Top quality lasers flashed from the stage all the way across to the back of the venue creating an incredible visual spectacle. Cannons shot out smoke and confetti at various intervals throughout the set. It was truly a sight to behold.

Appreciation should be given to the two openers, Mord Fustang and Gregori Klosman, who brought a ton of extra energy to the stage to warm up the crowd. Mord Fustang in particular clearly got a great reaction from the crowd.

I wonder if Dirty South was disappointed with the over the top visual display that Roseland apparently brought to the table. I can tell you one thing, everyone in attendance was happy it was there, and if this is an indication of the new standard for a Roseland production, it’s stock as a venue just shot up. I could go on and on about how fantastic Dirty South’s set was, but it’s pretty much the norm for him at this point – he’s definitely a DJ you want to catch when he’s in your area.