Menno De Jong, Ian Standerwick & Daniel Skyver LIVE

Event: Official Together Festival Warm Up Party
Venue: Presented by Journey at Clwb Ifor Bach, Cardiff
Date: 20th April 2014


Journey kicked off the Welsh music festival season on Easter Sunday, with the official Together Festival warm up party at Clwb Ifor Bach in Cardiff. With 2 international DJs headlining, strongly supported by rising star Daniel Skyver, and backed by local talent playing House, Electro, Hard Dance, DnB, Jungle and ‘OldSkool’ across 3 floors, there really was something for all tastes. But the night was all about pounding, Euphoric 138bpm Trance:

After a warm up by Ross Cornwell, Portsmouth’s Daniel Skyver took to the stage for a 90 minute set of Uplifting Trance. The small, but appreciative crowd responded warmly to the banging beats and driving melodies. Opening with his 2013 hit ‘Jamadian’, he hit the ground running, and didn’t let up the furious pace all the way through his mix. An equal mixture of his own work and the best new Uplifting tracks, it sounded raw and fresh. His recent releases ‘Tantrum’ and ‘Touching The Sky’ were well received and familiar to the crowd, but he wasn’t afraid to try our new material, and played 6 as yet unreleased tracks including 3 premieres (see setlist below). The pick of the new tracks was his new remix of the Andain classic ‘Beautiful Things’, which added a driving baseline to the popular vocals.

Next on stage was the first of the headliners, the increasingly familiar Ian Standerwick. In high demand following his recent performance on the ‘Who’s Afraid of 138?!’ stage at A State of Trance 650 in Utrecht, the Netherlands, Ian had travelled the short distance over the River Severn from his hometown of Portishead, near Bristol. For those of you familiar with his work, you won’t be surprised to hear that he maintained the high energy of Daniel’s set, dropping wave after wave of thunderous beats.

I missed the middle 30 minutes of his set while I was interviewing Menno, but the remainder that I heard was to an equally high standard, as you would expect. My 2 favourites that he played were remixes of a couple of classics. First, Russian Trance’s finest export, PPK ‎– ‘ResuRection’ from 2001, and then Solarstone’s genre defining ‘Seven Cities’ from 1999.

Finally, at 2:00am Menno De Jong took over to deliver 2 hours of melody laden ear-candy. Having burst onto the scene as a fresh faced 20 year old in 2004, Menno has spent the last 10 years building his reputation as one of the ‘Dutch Masters’ with an extensive and impressive back catalog of productions and performances, and an equally impressive loyal global fanbase. This was further demonstrated by the fact that I found out during the evening that almost half the people in the room had braved the wet weather to be in the Welsh capital on a Sunday night having travelled from across the UK, specifically to hear Menno play.

Menno started strongly with some recent tracks, and got better and better. He used his ample experience of working a crowd and they were lapping it up, chanting his name long before the end. His vocal monster ‘Creatures of the Night’ was a turning point, as after that he started to incorporate original versions and newer remixes of classic tracks, including tracks by Svenson & Gielen, Faithless and Mauro Picotto. He closed his set with a Tiesto theme – first he ‘finished’ with the crowd pleasing ‘Adagio For Strings’, before the inevitable encore of ‘Love Comes Again’, from the same 2004 album ‘Just Be’, and brought the night to a close with Tiesto’s ‘In Search Of Sunrise Mix’ of ‘Tears From The Moon’ by Conjure One.

So all in all, a night of top quality music, in a great venue. Only possible negative observation was that the sound system was a touch overpowering for the compact venue, but this didn’t detract from the enjoyment. The event was superbly run by the experienced Journey team and helpful club staff, with brilliant lasers, slick handovers and no hint of trouble. The contented crowd drifted away into the night, eager for the next Journey event and the Together Festival, both at the end of May.

Rating:
8.5/10


WANT MORE ?
Pictures, Tracklistings, Aftermovie and more at:
http://www.trancefixxed.co.uk/revie...ourney-cardiff/

INTERVIEWS
TranceFixxed Meets DANIEL SKYVER
TranceFixxed Meets IAN STANDERWICK
TranceFixxed Meets MENNO DE JONG