What Went Down: Steve Aoki Live in KL @ Club Neverland

Images Nicholas Chin

Things get crazy from the get go, with opening DJ sets by DJ KC and DJ Classick, Mr Fluff, and Goldfish and Blink tearing it up before Steve Aoki even gets to the venue. Needless to say, Neverland’s crowded to a full house in anticipation for the crazy Californian DJ, Steve Aoki, who’s been here twice before but the crowd pull shows no sign of waning interest by the Malaysian party scene.

We’re not gonna lie. We’re already pretty hammered as we get the call that Steve is arriving. We run to his dressing room, and there we find Steve and his entourage hovering over a huge (and we mean huge) cake with icing that says ‘Dim Mak’ on it (but we don’t see how Steve and his posse of 3 are going to finish it). We hang out for a bit to chat, and it’s obvious that he’s pumped to go on next with his eyes darting to the door every time it opens, giving him glimpses to the crazy crowd screaming outside.

And being the big time jocks we are, here at JUICE, we break the ice by comparing muscles and talking about workout. “I started getting more into fitness last year. I’m getting older, man. You start taking these things seriously when you’re older. I’m definitely a fan of the outdoors and being out in nature, but when it comes to really working out, I’m like working out during my shows, man. I’m sweating my f**king face off out there,” he laughs.

The door swings open again, and the screaming crowd gets to him, “EDM is really growing here. We wanna bring Dim Mak to Malaysia. We built a smaller stage last time and 5,000 people came. It shows that if you build it, the people will come. KL is definitely one of my favourite places in Asia.”

We didn’t want to keep him from his pre-perfomance warm ups any further with our drunken mumblings, so we left his dressing room (not before cam-whoring with him for a bit though), tripping over ourselves to find out that Blink is still rocking it on stage to a crowd that doesn’t seem to tire.

The party ran ’til about 1 in the morning before Steve comes on (we’re thinking to ourselves at this point, about how unproductive the KL workforce is gonna be the next morning, considering it’s a Wednesday night). The crowd goes wild as Steve jumps on stage. And if you think the party should be dying down by this hour, you’re dead wrong, dude. Shizz ‘bout to get cray.

Half an hour into his set, Steve leaves his deck to reach out to the front of the crowd. He pulls a babe out of the frontlines and brings her on stage. We rubbed our eyes to see if it was deceiving us in our drunken state… but it was really happening. Steve pulls out an inflatable raft of nowhere and puts her on it to surf the crowd like a boss.

Insanity ensues as some fans start jumping onto the stage themselves to see who can hug the DJ before the security pulls them away. A couple of them actually make it. But despite the insanity on and off the stage, Steve looks after the crowd, making sure they stay hydrated in the funniest stage antic we’ve ever seen. He pulls out bottles of water from his own stash and individually pours it into the opened mouths of people at the front.

And we finally find out what the giant cake was for…

… to feed a hungry crowd.

Steve Aoki Live in Kuala Lumpur happened at Club Neverland on 30 May 2012. If you missed it, or are having trouble remembering  the insanity that was Steve Aoki, we’ve got the photos to sate your curiosity here. You can check out more on Steve at steveaoki.com.