Gramatik @ The Fillmore with Jai Wolf, Mark Farina and Jenaux.

Text by Jennifer Granato. Images by Magdalena Papaioannou.

Gramatik’s Epigram Tour swung through Philadelphia last weekend. Hiding behind dark sunglasses and in front of a stunning visual projection screen, Denis Jašarević, the Slovenian native otherwise known as Gramatik, played to a sold out crowd at The Fillmore.

Jašarević played new tracks from his upcoming album, Epigram, during the two hour-long set, feeding the crowd music until The Fillmore shut down at 2am. His set was relentlessly exciting, bringing the crowd up and down and up again with driving, funky beats, hard drops and surprising the audience with guest vocalists.

While Jašarević has almost completely departed from Gramatik’s original sound of hip hop and trip hop, it is still there, heard in the broken beats and twangs of electric guitar. He even had a trumpet player, Ivan Jackson from Brasstracks, join him on several songs. The relaxed, laid back tracks with old soul music samples that longtime Gramatik fans are used to have been swapped out for dubstep drops and a much harder sounding style. Judging from the tracks he played on Friday, his new album seems to further explore these new sounds. All of Gramatik’s albums are available for free download on his website.

Before Gramatik, Jai Wolf hyped up the crowd with a fun, high energy set. Known for his remixes, he played a set of some of his more popular ones for a packed dance floor, including remixed tracks of Justin Beiber, Drake, ODESZA and The Weeknd.

Mark Farina and Jenaux also opened at the beginning of the night, but in particular, Jai Wolf’s set was a reminder that people shouldn’t always write off the openers.