UPDATED: Nov. 12 at 9:44 a.m.

Waves of smoke escaped in and out of roving spotlights, ice-cold water sprayed across the crowd and furious jerking as students weaved their way to the front — a packed Westcott Theater filled with wet heat against the freezing temperatures outside the doors. The theater had sold out tickets for Friday night’s show, featuring France-based electronic producer Point Point, rapper Joey Purp and electronic music duo and producers Louis The Child.

Show-goers trickled in as doors opened at 8 p.m., making a beeline for the bar and the merchandise table. French artist Lemuel Dufez of Point Point kicked off the night solo. It was the producer’s first time in Syracuse but he kept the crowd swaying in tandem with his 45-minute remix of Drake’s “Fake Love,” mixing in crowd-pleasers like Ginuwine’s “Pony” and futuristic tracks like San Holo’s “Light.”

The night saw an orange win at the Syracuse-Cornell basketball game, and a celebratory SU jersey-clad audience soon filled the room when rapper Joey Purp took the stage at 9 p.m.

Purp, another Chicago-based artist, riled up the crowd with Jay-Z’s “Ball So Hard” and Cardi B’s “Bodak Yellow.” Several phones in the audience simultaneously lit up as they timed their Snapchats and videos to Purp’s mix of Kendrick Lamar’s “HUMBLE.” He has previously collaborated with Chance The Rapper on “Girls @” and is a member of the SaveMoney collective, a Chicago-based rap collective of like-minded artists including Vic Mensa and Chance The Rapper.

Twenty minutes after doors opened, the night’s headliners were a no-show. Louis The Child didn’t go on stage till 11 p.m., but they decided to make the best of Syracuse and head to the Syracuse-Cornell basketball game.

Clad in an orange hoodie and overalls, Freddy Kennett, 19, and Robby Hauldren, 21, started off strong with a remix of “Love Is Alive,” one of the tracks on their 2017 EP. The crowd stayed on their toes as the duo followed up with their mix of Chance The Rapper’s “All Night,” Miike Snow’s “Genghis Khan” and their own “Fire.”

Syracuse was the 16th stop on Louis The Child’s 33-city North American Tour, “Last to Leave.”

“So far, so good,” Hauldren said about the tour. “It’s been really fun and we’re about halfway in. You do like four or five shows in a row, you get kind of tired, and then you get two days of good rest and then you’re ready to go back at it again.”

Hauldren and Kennett first met at a Madeon concert when Kennett was still in high school. Their friendship started with just a “soft hello,” as Kennett put it. One Facebook search by Kennett set things in motion for the two — Kennett finished high school and turned his attention to Louis The Child full-time.

“I didn’t do any homework in high school,” Kennett said. “I just like got home from school and produced for six hours a night every single night … I didn’t really do a good job of balancing school and work — but it worked out.”

After they produced their first track, they began to search for the perfect name — and a few clicks on the Random Article button on Wikipedia led them to “Louis The Child,” the name of a French prince. Both their love for art and royalty led them to their signature logo: a crown.

Life is good now, Kennett laughed. The duo has a collaboration in the works with Joey Purp and said they would like to work with Kid Cudi and Bon Iver. But their immediate plans after the tour are to push out an album in 2018.

Their logo was the center of their vibrant visual effects behind the stage: swirling animations of cities on fire to accompany their track “World on Fire,” danced with the spotlights.

Hauldren and Kennett took full advantage of the crowd’s energy, urging them to clap or wave as the track demanded, hitting the mark with their popular remix of Ty Dolla $ign, Future and Rae Sremmurd’s “Blasé” and their own “Weekend.”

The duo played off of each other while on stage, switching up their dancing, movement and interactions with the crowd. If Kennett was leaping on the table, Hauldren was sitting cross-legged on their table.

Close to midnight, as they mixed Kaskade and Skrillex’s “Lick It,” the two leapt off the platform in sync, rousing the unrelenting crowd. They left the stage dark only to come back and finish their set with one of their most-played hits on Spotify, “It’s Strange” featuring K.Flay. The track launched them into mass popularity in 2015 by making an appearance on one of Taylor Swift’s tweets and as the FIFA 2016 soundtrack.

The duo closed the night by giving the Syracuse crowd exactly what it wanted: a reverberating “Let’s Go Orange” chant and waiting after their set to talk individually to audience members and obliging with selfies. Finishing strong at nearly half past midnight, a mostly young Syracuse audience flocked out of the theater into the cold with the next plans for the night — treating the weekday like the weekend, as the headliners put it.

This post has been updated with appropriate style.

Published on November 11, 2017 at 9:10 pm

Contact: dmurthy@syr.edu