Most of the time, it might not matter what Skrillex is doing with his hands. Every time the bass dropped during his outrageous, frenetic, head-and-body-abusing set at the Starland Ballroom in Sayreville, N. J., on Sunday night, it rendered most other input moot. The bass was a warhead, landing with a boom, sticking around with a wobble.

A few years ago, or maybe in England — more on that later — that might have been enough. But American dance music has now entered its personality era, which means more senses need to be activated: namely, sight.

Skrillex is slight, but he is not small. His hair is long and stringy and flies around his wet head like a damp rag. And he wears a motion-capture suit during his performance, giving life to a robot doppelgänger displayed on a huge screen that mirrors him as he pokes at his laptop and the rest of his gear, and as he puffs a cigarette quickly between maneuvers and pumps his fist in the air, prompting the several hundred moist teenagers in the room to take a break from bounding around like electrons and raise their fists right back at him.