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Wow. I can't believe how much trance Barry played. And I can't believe how well the room reacted to it. **In your face, disbelievers.**
Long review ahead; I hope it's useful.
Great night, which actually started in Guelph at Veronica's place at 2 in the afternoon. Many drinks were consumed and much fun was had. Thanks to Cale, Veronica, and her friends/room-mates for the good times (and Cale for the JAGERBOMBS!). Barry picked us up and we all went to Rev. Then he got set up and played classic trance until midnight. WONDERFUL. Around 11:30, the room was going NUTS. He played stuff like Purple Haze - Adrenaline, Darren Tate - Winter [Max Graham Sidechain], Young Parisians - Jump The Next Train [Kyau & Albert], and even Tiesto - Suburban Train. Many many more classics were thrown down and the room LOVED it. He was mostly playing requests, but somehow the set ended up flowing really well and I danced my ass off.
At midnight, Barry started playing the usual house/electro stuff (he opened with a cute little deadmau5-esque robot voice opening bit, which included the phrase "no I will not play fucking tiesto" despite the fact that he had already played some. Oh, the irony...) Anyways, I secretly wish he would retire all of those mainstream mashups/mixes, especially "jump around" and "thunderstruck", which IMO are terrible. The only good one I remember liking was the "Smack My Bitch Up" one. But the mainstream crowd eats that shit up like candy, so I can see why Barry keeps playing it. He played a bunch more electro, which was good... some dirty stuff, some questionable older overplayed stuff (Toca's Miracle [Inpetto Mix]?? Isn't everyone sick of this by now??), a remix of Deadmau5 - Slip which I found rather disappointing, but also some really great ones (Wolfgang Gartner - Flashback!) He kept not being able to find the CDs containing the music he wanted to play, which possibly contributed to the hit-and-miss-ness of this portion of his set. The crowd wasn't too picky and seemed to dance their asses off whenever a good beat dropped anyway.
At some point (after 1:30), Ampz played Pjanoo (always a useful track to pivot around when switching genres) and started palying 130 bpm new school proggier trance stuff. Played Delerium - Silence [Remix], Wippenberg - Chakalaka, Oceanlab - Miracle [Michael Cassette Remix], Above and Beyond - No One On Earth, and a few other epic tunes that I forgot. He ended off with the Paul Van Dyk remix of Underworld - Born Slippy. Perfect again. Happy happy happy trance in my pants.
Mixing was perfect except for one or two tiny slip-ups at the start of the night, and a few mis-timed (late) mixes which were probably due to Barry spending so much time searching through his binders of CDs for the right tracks, and getting them cued up last minute. Despite this, his beatmatching was never off; Ampz can perfectly beatmatch any two tracks in 5 seconds, or so it seems. Barry, your enormous CD collection needs ctrl+F. :P
The levels were good, not at all deafening like when Tim plays; almost a bit too quiet at the start (when the trance was playing and the room started filling up, I almost felt that the volume needed to go up a little.) I only needed my earplugs once or twice for particular songs when the highs were not EQed well and were coming through way too strong. I really do believe that the purple room sound system sounds MUCH cleaner and better when it's not cranked all the way to the red. There is a lesson to be learned here for some of the other purple room residents who crank shit WAY TOO LOUD in there.
It was great to meet Ben (Inrush) and his girlfriend (Nicole, I think.) I had a wonderful time destroying the dancefloor with you guys. There were a few other new faces there from TA and elsewhere; I'm braindead right now and can't remember any of your names. *I FAIL*. Eventually I will learn. *sigh*
Cheers to Cale, Veronica, Barry, Aaron, Tammy, Dan, Mada, Marina, and everyone else (all the people I'm forgetting. UGH). You guys *made* the night.
Cheers also to Veronica's friend Sarah, who tagged along despite not being an EDM fan and still managed to stay in the purple room for most of the night. I hope you had a good time!
Special thanks go to Dan for driving me home so Barry didn't have to, and his friends (Christina and Amanda, I believe) for having an incredibly AWKWARDLY HILARIOUS conversation with me on the drive home.
Great night. Now for sleep. ^_^
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I am nobody. Nobody is perfect. Therefore I am perfect.
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