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Originally posted by LightsOut Having said that, I respect everyone who came together to finally bring Ricardo Villalobos back to Toronto, certainly not an easy feat. If last night was anyones first time seeing him and left disappointed, I would strongly suggest checking him out again if given the opportunity, at a festival or day party overseas. When he's on, it really is magic and a completely different sound then last night. Overall, clearly last night failed for a lot of reasons that don't need to be brought up again, but hopefully this can be looked upon as a learning experience that can help make future big bookings better.

Agreed.

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"In a world of illusion you only see what you feel"

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Originally posted by Vanos i inferred that comment was more related to the gheyness of his music correlated with chicago styles, aka "dont play that shit in to, keep it to chicago". im assuming he plays like chicago house/vocal house/disco house etc. which is really gay shit

wow holy batman generalizations
Chicago house can be SO much fun

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Just surrender yourself to the rhythm,
With your hands up in the sky,
Feel the energy deep inside your system
And leave this world behind...

First of all.. this:

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Originally posted by spiderpig Uh, are you new? 1. Sneak lives here 2. Besides this party, have you ever been to his other ones? Sneak's Bday Beats has always been one of the best parties each year he has it. Music, Vibe, everything is always top notch. Before you make comments like that, make sure you know what you're talking about, otherwise you look like an ignorant idiot. Fine, you had a shitty time at this party, don't start knocking the guy. He brought Toronto a guy that ALL OF YOU have been salivating to see, it's too bad it didn't pan out. This is what happens when: a. you have a party in the district. b. you get way too many promoters involved. Sneak should have just kept it simple like the old days.

I actually enjoyed myself for the most part at this party. Got there fairly early, just after 11. I loved the venue in comparison to Schmooze. Bravo for turning the venue into something that has great potential. The decor and lighting were sweet, and the overall layout of the club was like Sonic meets TIL. The crowd was pretty mixed; lots of beautiful people. I didn't find it as pretentious as others; By no means was it close to being like This Is London. I didn't experience too much pushing and I found a decent amount of people to at least be polite about it.

There were of course a few things a miss for a party of this caliber which is to be expected. Promoters said to arrive early.. the club had reached capacity really quickly. The issue here was that ticket holders had to wait in a much longer line that will call. Many had to wait over 2 hours and didn't even get to go in, with a ticket and all. They need to prioritize ticket holders in the future and ensure that they will have a spot in the club. Coat check was donation only, which at first was very generous, but that turned into a disaster for they ran out of space so early on and the organization in there was horrible. We're talking about 30 - 45 average wait time to GET your coat back. Drinks were pretty expensive too.. but promoters have no say in this. The sound needs to be tweaked, there's no denying that. There were a few good spots where you could make out the music perfectly, but it was pretty distorted in most parts on the main dance floor.

The openers were pretty bumpin' and made for good socializing tuneage. Sneak I found to be all over the place; didn't get into it as much as I'd tried, but there were some fun tracks thrown in his set. Most people going in seeing Villalobos for the first time usually have the wrong perception of what he's like and what he'll play. He's known to be pretty random with his music selection and likes to goof around. It was hard to enjoy myself given how crowded it was at this point, but Katy dragged us to the very front where the sound was sort of clear and the vibe was killer. I thought Ricardo was pretty good but definately nowhere near galactic lol. He was eclectic with his track selection and transitioned decently; not sloppy. Only Ricardo Villalobos can pull off suddenly bringing the wayback playbacks and get away with it. 80s, 90s freestyle WTF FTW haha. He lost me for a bit from 3 - 4 but I enjoyed watching him have as much fun as he did. I really liked 4 - 5 as he started to play deeper and funkier. Most people had left by then. Thanks for the dancing space! His outro was very.... strange. It brought me back to the "Adam Beyer" afterparty 4 years ago when they tortured us with Bjork for an hour.

Overall, Ricardo was a bit underwhelming, but I still managed to enjoy chunks of his set. I think this venue has great potential and I look forward to them correcting their errors and bringing in more talent.

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GWARTQZ!!!!

A lot of reviews here are just people who have hugely high expecations (ever hear of don't believe the hype, ever?) or were let down because they waited a billion hours in line...meh.

I agree with everything Rj said AND like Tara, I met some cool people too, people from Nyc, Montreal, it was cool. I dare say MORE friendly then the people we USUALLY get in Toronto parties.

SUCK IT UP BUTTERCUP if you didn't like the party.

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Und ich tanz einfach weiter...

quote:

Originally posted by Vanos i inferred that comment was more related to the gheyness of his music correlated with chicago styles, aka "dont play that shit in to, keep it to chicago". im assuming he plays like chicago house/vocal house/disco house etc. which is really gay shit

This post makes you sound like a real tool. Homophobic too.

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GWARTQZ!!!!

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Originally posted by rabbitjoker I thought the opening act and Sneak were great. The place was on fire from 11:30 to 2:30 AM - party bongo tunes, everybody was rockin' good! House, house, house - good, good, good. Those who arrived early enjoyed it. Ricardo was good for 1h and then got distracted (by who knows what) and it went downhill. Disjointed, unplanned-feeling, odd-flow (other than 10-15 bursts). The end showed some potential and then again went off into the neither-regions of programming.

Absolutely agree with all of the above. 3-4am was a musical void IMO.

However, I have to add, the coat check situation took what was a decent night and made me leave absolutely infuriated. Hand girl ticket, girl drops on floor with other tickets, says oops, I don't know which one is yours. 45 minutes later, she finally is able to show us our jackets. FORTY FIVE MINUTES. Hey twit, you have ONE job. ONE. And it's not fucking hard.

This was after waiting almost 1 hour to check them to begin with.

Clearly, Ricardo Villalobos was only playing for himself last night. It was like watching him masturbate on stage. I paid $30 to dance, not to be involved in some horrible threesome where no one gets off (except, of course, for RV).

What really sucks is that there is SO MUCH good music out there right now... and he didn't play any of it. If I can access it, then so can he. Remember that the set he played was a choice, and he chose to play really shitty music… he chose ego stroking instead of doing his job.

after waiting so long to hear this guy and what happened last night... i am so disappointed

Dj sneak.. wow, he had some good grooving tracks going but his mixing was so so so so bad, he train recked a couple times and the music cut out on him completely.. yet everybody just started cheering (when villalobos had a little mix up the crowd would yell "ohhhhh"). it just seemed like good mixing was non existent.


Ricardo started off amazing, that jazzy bassline track was awesome, it kept going and he would cut the kick and bass out making you want to hear the bass come back multiple times, I thought this was a sign that it was going to be a good night... but a few songs in it just started going down hill, then he played the my life track i think, which didn't sound to bad but he went in to this 80's thing and it completely killed my mood. the last hour though he played some nice tracks went pretty hard and that kind of saved the night for me.

Maison is a nice club, very impressed by it... except the coat check took 30 mins and then they closed it after i checked my coat, so i got really lucky. The sound system was crisp and picked up the highs really nice but......... the djs seemed to be red lining it and it wasn't being used to its full potential, i heard a bit of echoing also from the way the club is i guess.

Track of the night Skala -Christian Burkhardt

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www.soundcloud.com/CasualtiesofSound

so glad i didnt get in now

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"And in the end, it's not the years in your life that count. It's the life in your years."-- Abraham Lincoln.

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Originally posted by Skipper Absolutely agree with all of the above. 3-4am was a musical void IMO. However, I have to add, the coat check situation took what was a decent night and made me leave absolutely infuriated. Hand girl ticket, girl drops on floor with other tickets, says oops, I don't know which one is yours. 45 minutes later, she finally is able to show us our jackets. FORTY FIVE MINUTES. Hey twit, you have ONE job. ONE. And it's not fucking hard. This was after waiting almost 1 hour to check them to begin with.

ouch. that sucks hard!

as for the music, i quite enjoyed Fries & Bridges and Sneak had some inspired moments there - i thought the vibe was pretty hot overall.

villalobos was very hit or miss. he played some really interesting tunes, but then also some very filler stuff.
his mixing was at times laser point with what he was doing, very precise, but at other times so crazily loose it was baffling. drunken kung fu master stylez i would say. interesting for sure, but not exactly a party kinda vibe.

i got there earlyish to avoid the predictable door shit show, and left just before close, to avoid the similar thing with coatcheck. i enjoyed the venue and the party!

blame the PROMOTERS

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Originally posted by PivotTechno So people's expectations are to blame for the poor reviews?

When expectations are not met reviews will be bad... pretty easy concept.
It was Sneaks birthday beats. Ricardo was playing for DJ Sneak... I really do not understand how anyone thought they were going to get Berlin Ricardo Villalobos… I expected to hear his version of house, his version of classics, his version of vocals, and yes... his version of cheese…

quote:

Originally posted by Vanos i inferred that comment was more related to the gheyness of his music correlated with chicago styles, aka "dont play that shit in to, keep it to chicago". im assuming he plays like chicago house/vocal house/disco house etc. which is really gay shit

You went to one of the fathers of HOUSE MUSIC 's birthday... seriously what did you expect?


Ok review time.

I think my experience last night was vastly different than you all for a few reasons. 1) I partied with a completely different attitude. 2) I went for DJ Sneak (cause I'm a house gansta) 3) I had no idea what to expect of Villalobos. Every time I clicked on a youtube link on the roll call I hated what I heard after 5 seconds, so I decided to just let him be surprise and go in open minded.

I knew that this party was going to be over sold. So I got there early to avoid the clusterfuck that would happen around 11:30. Plus I had heard good things about Fries and Bridges and felt they were worth checking out. I got into the club 10:50, not a single person in line. Coat check was maybe a 5 minute wait and I was really impressed that I didn't have to pay anything but a tip.

Took some time to explore the club, they did an amazing job on the renos. The club was BEAUTIFUL - a nice change from the usual venues.

I was really happy with Fries and Bridges set. It was the perfect warm up set, pretty fun sexy house tunes. They dropped the following track which made my night - one of those tracks that takes me to a really really happy place.



Sneak played a pretty good set too. My biggest problem with his set was that I felt he held back too much for his first hour. The vibe around me was huge and everyone just wanted to party, he definitely could have turned it up a notch earlier. Overall not as good as when I saw him in Detroit this summer but he had some really really great hand in the air booty shaking house moments.

I am not 100% how I feel about Villalobos. I enjoyed myself for the most part. When he first came on the change in music really threw me off, I left, filled up my water, and came back with a new mind set. Quickly I found myself getting into his set. His disco voyage seemed to have come out of no where, it really threw EVERYONE off... but hey, I like disco house - I took it for what it was and had some fun with it. I felt like he kept on going on different tangents and it took time sometime to catch up - but meh, I just kept dancing and enjoying the people around me. I really enjoyed watching him and his sloppyness... it was everything I had expected from his youtube videos. A sleezy I dont give a fuck attitude. And yeah he has some serious wtf bad mixing moment and some skips in beats here and there - but I wasnt going to let something like that ruin my night. I really enjoyed him 4-5, although disappointed to not hear him and sneak go b2b. I think the b2b would have really brought the whole night together and people would have maybe understood why he some of the styles of music that he did.

Oh and I enjoyed hearing 'It's my Life'... I thought it was really fun. Im a sucker for a bit of cheese once and a while

At 4am I tried to outsmart half the crowd (as the club was still pretty rammed) and get my coat early. To my dismay I found myself in a huge non moving line.Disappointed in how slow the line was moving I spoke to the bouncer about finding a solution. He apologized that I had been waiting so long, took my ticket and went and got my coat. Awesome

I stayed until close. I loved loved loved the 2nd or 3rd last track he dropped. And his closing was... an interesting experience lol. Overall I expected more from the number one techno dj… but I wouldn’t say he RUINED my night, that it was the WORST night ever… I danced, I laughed, I heard a lot new things…

To touch on a few other things...

I am pretty disappointed on how over sold this party was. I was worried the fire marshall was going to shut it down. With the exception of guv I have never been to a party so rammed. The club was not prepared; I waited 15 minutes at the bar just to be told they were out of water (it wasnt 2pm yet). I guess the got more shortly after. I tend to be the queen of finding good spots on the dance floor. 90% of the night I had enough room to dance and goof around, no one pushed me, and I thought the crowd was sexy, fun, down to party. I met some really great people through out the night. Yes there were some douchebags and bimbos, but they were less annoying than the crowd I experienced at FW last friday. Why let losers ruin your night? Just move to a new spot. I thank you all dealing with the Jersey Shore crowd cause the people around me were mad chill.
Oh and I wish I had a dollar for how many random people recognized me from TA – certainly made the night amusing.

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"House music is the soundtrack to the more deviant, exciting, rebellious side of life." -Lawler