Registered: Oct 2002
Location: Flying over the cuckoo's nest
Review: Circo Loco Amsterdam (Queen's Day event) 30/04/08
Before I start, let me just tell you about Queen's Day if you don't know about it. Queen's Day is a bank holiday in Amsterdam. On this holiday, everyone is drinking and having a good time in the streets. People blast music from bars, their apartments, or even their own private party boats on the canals (and 90% of this music is dance music too!). At night, they have stages with the likes of Armin van Buuren, David Guetta, etc which are on the street and completely free. Also, this is the only day where people are allowed to sell stuff out on the street without a licence, so you see some really cool stuff being sold when you walk around. I had an amazing time on Queen's Day, and it was one of my favourite things I've done in Europe so far. It's really worth going to!
Here's a pretty good depiction of what the day is about. Kind of long, but worth skipping through:
We arrived halfway through Magda's set (around 3pm), and it was perfect for the start of the party. Slower, groovier, but fucking bad-ass music to get everyone going. Actually, this kind of music to me is good at any time during the day or night, and I'd love to see Magda play a solo set some time.
Afterwards we went to go check out Gui Boratto, but I wasn't really feeling the big synthy builds given that I had just arrived and the party wasn't really full on yet, so we went back out to Magda pretty quickly.
I also checked out Warren Fellow for a few minutes who was pretty impressive. He played a couple of older tunes, but damn did he ever have that tent going. Anyone know anything about this guy?
I then went to check out Rhadoo v. Pedro, but they were playing a bit too housey for my liking. They had the room going pretty nuts though, and it was a cool little area they were playing in:
After, I decided to give Luciano yet another chance. Well, I can finally say that I get it. Before Queen's Day, I had seen him three times before. One time he was b2b with Ricardo and was amazing (although he played really differently than he usually does), the other time he was pretty good, and the other time he didn't impress me at all. To be honest, I didn't really understand why people liked his solo sets so much.
However, on Queen's Day, I really got it. I think that Luciano needs to be heard during the day in some sort of outdoor venue. This was exactly the setting on Queen's Day, and did he ever deliver. Luciano plays a mix of deep house, and very deep minimal that is in my opinion kind of hard to pull off. However, when he does, it's fucking amazing. Hearing him play these deep, funky, and sometimes epic tracks as the sun set on Wednesday really made me understand the hype. His persona behind the decks really added to the experience too. He was grooving around, clapping and had his hands in the air for almost his entire set. Even though he isn't my favourite DJ, for some reason, he is one of my favourite DJs to watch behind the decks.
He built his set quite nicely with the groovey stuff from his Essential Mix for the first half
and towards the second half he started picking up the madness a bit which he failed to do at Timewarp.
Highlights of his set include Track #10 from his Essential Mix (it's untitled) playing while the sun made a rare appeance from behind the clouds. This caused an amazing reaction from the crowd, in which they all started cheering, clapping, and turned their backs on Luciano, put their hands in the air and faced the sun. I did the same, while jumping up and down, and laughing how truly amazing it was that people could go so crazy over something so simple as the sun.
(The two girls in this video are doing exactly that, but I didn't get the actual moment when the sun came out since it was so sudden.)
He played a lot of his songs from his Essential Mix, plus a few more that I hadn't heard before. I'd love to see Luciano in this kind of environment again.
After Luciano was Tania Vulcano. This was my 2nd time seeing her, and as with the other time, she was ok, but definitely should not be playing the last slot (7pm-9pm) at a party like this. She is way too techy/repetitive, with not enough big builds to harness the energy. There were some good parts to her set however:
I made my way to see Shinedoe & 2000 and One, but to be honest given the fact that I had been partying since 9am that day, I really can't remember how their set was at all. It was better than Tania's though. =P
Did Circo Loco Amsterdam compare with the original in Ibiza? Well, although the music was really good at DC10 when I went, Richie and Ricardo played a 9hr b2b set, so I didn't really get to hear that stereotypical clicky, looney, Circo Loco type sound (I know poor me, but I was kind of dissapointed). Given the line-up at this party, I definitely got to hear that kind of sound. Also, curiously the fashion at this party was pretty much the same as it was at DC10, every single person I met was Dutch at this party, whereas at DC10, everyone is English or Spanish. Does the vibe compare? Not really, but I think that's because you can't really have the level of debauchery you do in DC10 in many other places. They did have some antics though, such as this
(hard to notice, but these 2 girls are playing catch with a velcro raquet lol)
I still had a lot of fun though, and the crowd did the crouch down/jump up thing which they didn't do at DC10 when I was there (see above video).
ps. They had a clown serving popcorn. That was fucking awesome, lol.
May-04-2008 08:45
magikb
Home of Lix and Jennē
Registered: Jan 2004
Location: on the other side
I've always wanted to go to Queen's Day in Holland. The lineups for the parties are insane and I've heard the atmosphere just screams awesomeness.
Great review Graham!
btw, whereabouts was this held? It looks similar to where Dance Valley is held with the field and the hills in the background of one of your videos.
___________________
May-04-2008 10:45
*~LiSa-LoO~*
Ferry Corsten's bitch
Registered: Mar 2003
Location: on holiday
I ate you
no, that is not a typo
___________________
Shut up and DANCE!!
House moves my body, Trance owns my soul, Progressive drives me wild
May-04-2008 11:20
jon jon
viva la clubland
Registered: Jan 2001
Location: Footwork
little G is on fire...
nice review and thanks for sharing (again), as usual I got an incrdibly good sense of the party, felt like I was there!
you're going to have a hard time coming back to Toronto!
