This is gonna make me the laughing stock of MD but my last night out was none other than Group Therapy 100 at MSG. I know, I know. But every now and then I get a hankering for some trance, and A&B are some of my favorite producers in the genre (plus are cool blokes). Though of course Anjunadeep is much much much more my cup of tea. Anyways, the show took place at Madison Square Garden, which is more well-known for being the home of the Knicks and Rangers. And I had seats, they were in the 200s, near the nosebleed section, which is weird when you're used to being front and center in the middle of a crowd at these events. It was my girlfriend's first major electronic music related event, apart from the times I took her to see fellow TA Blueshift perform locally. She was just glad that we had seats since she wasn't excited at the prospect of standing for 7 hours :P So anyways, while it felt weird being a bit disconnected from the action, it was still pretty cool. It started with a deep house/progressive set from Tony McGuiness, pretty much what you'd expect from an A&B themed deeper set... Then Ilan Bluestone came to perform. To be honest I was absolutely blown away by his track "Big Ben", it was one of the more unique trance tracks of the past few years. He finished up with said track, but before then there were a lot of other of his productions. Can't really find fault with his set. Next up was Andrew Bayer, his stuff veered a bit towards the EDM/electro-trance side of things. Wasn't terribly enthused by it but it was certainly listenable. Next up was Mat Zo, and he stole the show. He played everything from funky French-influenced house, tech bangers, classic big-room trance. It felt fresh and very different from what you'd usually expect from an Anjunabeats-themed show. Then finally came A&B. The light show and visuals were of course the best during their performance, and they played all of their big hits (a remix of Sun and Moon, Thing Called Love, Blue Sky Action) and some stuff from their new album. The biggest surprises were a remix of Salva Mea by Faithless and Totem by Ansolo. Overall quite the show, I had a great time.
And the night before ABGT100 I went to Miku Expo NY. What is that you may ask? It's a concert featuring hologram "vocaloids", basically mascots for text-to-voice software. Think William Gibson's "Idoru" in real life. It was certainly very surreal but absolutely amazing, as someone who loves both cyberpunk technology and anime. All of the major vocaloids were there, including my personal favorite Megurine Luka. And a lot of the songs were recognizable from the Project Diva series of rhythm games for PS3/PSP/Vita. I took 2 of my friends and they were both absolutely blown away by the performance...
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9-9-99 Never Forget
Quarantine Music Festival 2020
All My Mixes!
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