“For a tour based on an album named Lasers, I was just hoping the light show would be a little more creative than colored spotlights and a series of blinding strobe lights.”

That’s what my fellow Scene columnist Aurora Schnorr wrote in review of the Lupe Fiasco concert Tuesday night.

Well Aurora, if you wanted to see pretty lights, you picked the wrong day to go to the Convocation Center, 1525 W. Lincoln Highway.

Pretty Lights lived up to its name Thursday night, putting on a raucous performance for a near-capacity, neon-clad crowd.

The stage name of DJ and producer Derek Smith, Pretty Lights, brought his unique blend of electronica, dub-step and sample-based wall of noise to the Convo.

The extravagant light show that accompanied Pretty Lights’ set perhaps even overshadowed the music. The crowd was bathed in a twirling galaxy of multi-colored pyramids of light, always synced with the ebbs and flows of the music behind it.

“He’s really good with the crowd,” said Tiana Lucaccioni, sophomore elementary education major. “The lights are amazing.”

The lights spun and crawled over the crowd and up the Convo walls, pausing sometimes only for effect or highlighting the occasional cloud of smoke.

The light show seemed to mirror Smith’s exaggerated stage presence. Smith was constantly in motion on stage, hunched over his equipment and bobbing his head in time.

The crowd was chatty and somewhat apathetic during openers DJ Solo and Positive Vibrations, but as soon as Pretty Lights hit the stage, it was all business.

Smith is a master at building tension before releasing it with a spine-shaking bass drop.

Pretty Lights raged through crowd favorites like “Hot Like Sauce” and “I Know the Truth,” and the crowd showed its appreciation with fist pumps and explosions of glowsticks.

Dakota Lucas, Illinois Institute of Technology architecture student who drove from Chicago to see the show, put it succinctly yet appropriately:

“It’s so kick-a**.”