This year UCSB had the privilege of having Asaf Borger (also known as Borgore) grace Storke Tower with his presence for A.S. Program Board’s annual Welcome Back Concert. While not a lot of people seemed to know who Borgore was before the concert, the Israeli DJ’s popularity in the electronic dance music world has been growing immensely as he has headlined for numerous myLifeEveryDay (LED) shows and also closed on day one of Electric Daisy Carnival (EDC). The opener, Brass Knuckles, has also been on the rise as they have been associated with big dubstep names such as Knife Party, Krewella and Adventure Club.

Brass Knuckles opened the show promptly at 9 p.m. Borgore took stage about an hour later. He opened with one of his newest releases called “That Lean” which is one of his many collaborations with DJ Carnage. Other originals that were played include “Nympho,” “Incredible” and “Decisions,” a song featuring Miley Cyrus, cake and one of Borgore’s proudest moments.

On one of his recent podcasts, he claimed to take personal responsibility for Miley Cyrus’ controversial publicity stunts and he regrets nothing. Borgore showed his love for the no longer-child actress by dropping his remix of the Migos song “Hannah Montana” toward the end of his set. When he finished the performance around 11 p.m., the UCSB crowd egged him on to come back and perform “Ice Cream,” one of his most popular hits.

There was an obvious difference between the show Borgore played in Las Vegas on day one of EDC at five in the morning, and the one he put on at Storke Tower last Saturday. While his sets usually dive deep into the grimiest of house songs as well as his original songs which are infamous for having offensive lyrics, his performance at the Welcome Back Concert seemed to cater very, very strongly to the exclusively UCSB crowd.

This was actually not a good thing. Maybe it was the overflowing input of Top 40’s that left the set bland, but the hype from his usual performances was nowhere to be found.

“It was dope for the first part when he was playing filthy trap and ‘hardstyle,’ but when he started playing every variation of ‘Wakanda’ (Dimitri Vegas & Like Mike), ‘Animals’ (Martin Garrix) and cheesy beatport Top 10, I wasn’t feeling it,” said Christina Hernandez, a fourth-year student at UCSB.

Whereas true Borgore fans like Hernandez were disappointed, quite a few people who had hated on him before his show admitted to being impressed by the performance.

Well, to each their own. In the end, the concert was still a successful one, filling Storke Plaza to the brim with students. And, as Borgore stated many times throughout the show, everyone was prepared to — and did — “turn up.”

This article appeared on page 10 of Thursday October 3, 2013′s print edition of The Daily Nexus.