Winter Warmer @ The Fillmore Auditorium in Denver (Review) [2-14-14]

Review By: Justin D'Amico

Last weekend Live Nation and Cervantes' Masterpiece Ballroom put on a big EDM concert called Winter Warmer at The Fillmore Auditorium in Denver. The Winter Warmer brought together a bunch of different artists and a good variety of musical EDM sub-genres. The Polish Ambassador, Wick-It The Instigator, and Michal Menert all threw down hard.







Cervantes Masterpiece Ballroom started the weekend off early last Thursday with a Winter Warmer pre-party showcasing Wick-It The Instigator. This was my first time seeing Wick-It live and he was awesome. Wick-It represents Nashville, Tennessee, but after a killer weekend in Denver he is considering moving out to Colorado. He was happy to share his first ever experience legally purchasing marijuana here on his trip to Denver. One way Wick-It sticks to his Nashville roots is with a killer trap remix of  the Johnny Cash song "Walk The Line". He also rocked a remix of C&C Music Factory's song "Everybody Dance Now" - needless to say, everybody did. Wick-It The Instigator did a great set for Winter Warmer pre-party at Cervantes Masterpiece Ballroom. 

Winter Warmer was my first time at The Fillmore Auditorium and I was impressed with the venue. The Fillmore Auditorium is a giant room with a lowered dance floor about the size of an NHL hockey rink. The dance floor is surrounded by another standing level and above certain sections of that middle level are balcony areas. The balcony at the very rear part of the room has a small seated section. When sitting in the back balcony seats you are about 300 feet from the stage, to give you an idea of how long the room is. For the Winter Warmer nearly the entire dance floor was full and bouncing all night.

The Winter Warmer fell on St. Valentines Day and a lot of love was in the air, love for electronic music and trippy visuals. The stage set up for most of Winter Warmer included a brilliant visual display using a high power projector and giant white fabric arches were the canvas. The stage setup mostly was provided by The Polish Ambassador, but the opening artists used it as well. The final version of the white arches wasn't revealed until just before The Polish Ambassador started. The white arches stage setup is a creation of Liminus, the excellent graphics specialist who accompanied The Polish Ambassador on stage for the Winter Warmer performance. The best visuals of the night came during a Polish Ambassador remix of Michael Jackson's "Beat It". For this song Liminus used a morphing image of all the different faces of Michael Jackson from his youth and progressing to later in his life. The Polish Ambassador and Liminus had incredible energy on stage which made the performance even more entertaining.

To close out the night was Denver native Michal Menert. For this show Michal Menert brought a live drummer, A.C. Lao, to play the beats. The majority of the set was a glitch hop flavor with some variations here and there. Michal Menert refers to his style of music as space jazz and that is a pretty good way of describing it. His beats are very chill with some interesting futuristic bass lines. Michal Menert is part of Pretty Lights Music the label founded by Derek Vincent Smith aka Pretty Lights. The crowd was going insane for Michal Menert, he is definitely loved in his home town. Michal Menert was superb live and a great closer for the Winter Warmer.