The Wamu Theater has been home to many events ranging from massives like USC Events, and then more…

Alison Wonderland was the third show at the Wamu and I’ve been meaning to see Alison for quite sometime as her style of mixing and singing over her own tracks seemed unique and to add some flair to the EDM scene. Not to mention that her Awake album (released on April 6th, 2018) was full of hits that only seemed to keep giving us that future bass taste we can’t get enough of.

The event opened up with Bleep Bloop but we didn’t arrive ’till about 9pm to catch the start of Baauer. I made jokes prior to the event that I wasn’t excited for either of the openers but Baauer Immediately made me eat my words. I missed him at last year’s Paradiso because of conflicting set time with another artist. I’m not a huge fan of trap music but he owned his style and blended into remixes very well. I thought he wouldn’t do the Harlem Shake as he probably done it to death, but he did it with such finesse and an unexpected drop that was much better than if he were to stay true to the classic. If I get the opportunity to see him again, I will be going in with higher expectations.

As the crowd sat in darkness, everyone in the room waited as the stage setup took longer than anticipated. The wait was more than worth it when the lights started sparking the room giving a dim glare across the crowd. As her logo burned onto the screen through a dancing flame as a cover of When Doves Cry came on with a beautiful female vocals. It then shifted to the beginning tempo of Good Enough with visuals of red rain clouds, thunder storms, and views of Alison working her soundboard. The drop revealed that her stage setup was a tower of 3 different blocks of varying sizes all placed on top of each other. The blocks were able to show different visuals from the main screen which made you fixated on it for almost the entire show. The visuals on the back screen kept shifting from her DJ’ing and clips of various music videos as well as herself doing multiple tasks. The blocks shifted from things like lit candles, cassette tapes, and sometimes just main screen’s background to give the stage more of a 3D effect. My favorite use of the stage is when Alison sang Church and the back screen showed fields with pouring rain as the blocks displayed stone cathedral patterns.

This set had really upped my expectations on how to throw a proper show as Alison didn’t go too over the top and was still able to maximize the use of the venue in her finest form. I will continue to see what DJs and artists will be able to bring next to Wamu since each experience isn’t comparable to one another and only leaves you with more anticipation for the next show.

Next show I should be catching at the venue should be Rezz’s Certain Kind of Magic tour and I can’t wait to see what stage setup she may have in store, especially when seeing how the females of EDM do nothing but kill it!

-Jeffrey Davis