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Nobody made a thread because I was the only one who actually went, and I was too tired from being up all night and then travelling back home from Liverpool to write anything.
This was one of those nights that you look forward to so much, when it actually comes to the night everything has to go wrong just to bring it back down to Earth. Firstly, nobody I knew turned up - every TA who said they were going pulled out at the last minute, and then all my friends in Liverpool cancelled on me for various reasons. So although I got to chat to Sam a fair bit a few times on the night, for the most part I was on my own, which is not what you want at this kind of night. Of course, everyone was very friendly - got chatting to a bunch of Cream veterans at the pre-party, and plenty of friendly people during the night itself, but it was still a spanner in the works.
The night itself got better musically as it went on. I got there towards the end of Steve Parry's set, which consisted mainly of housier tracks less to my taste. He did end with a couple of proggier tracks - Lil Mo' Yin Yang's "Reach" and what I believe was the original Sasha remix of Horse - Careful, both massive classics. Then John Graham came on and brought in the Quivver remix of Mozaic - The Hallelujah Song, which obviously had me losing my shit right from the start. Likewise Mick Park opening with the Breeder remix of Nothing Left by Orbital. However, the Quivver/Mick Park B2B set was notable as much for really lazy mixing as for the tunes - a lot of very quick and hasty transitions to cram the hits in, with little in the way of a cohesive and thoughtful set being built. For example, Quivver played Arkham Asylum for all of 3 minutes, which misses the point of that record. Then Mick Park closed his set by stopping the record and putting Xpander on - only to fade out just before the dancefloor-slaying drop halfway through and just start Wide Open Space from the start - and then faded out halfway through that as well! So while this set was heavy on the classics, it was extremely low on flow.
The Tilt live set was much better - sadly I missed the first half on the phone with girl issues. Came back in during their remix of Children, which was every bit as massive in the Courtyard as you'd expect. This set was basically 45 minutes of all the Tilt hits delivered to exactly the right crowd to appreciate them.
The highlight of the night was probably Sam's set, which I spent entirely on the podium. More than anyone else on the bill, he played a proper set with thoughtful mixing and liquid flow. Avoiding the classics that had already been played earlier and at previous Reunions, his set was trancier and channelled World Tour-era Oakenfold. As someone who has only started clubbing long after this era passed, to me good trance is associated with small clubs, underground venues and darker, harder sounds. Big room uplifting trance has nothing but negative connotations for me. Stood on the podium in the Courtyard watching the forest of hands thrust in the air to to the likes of Mystery Land, Seven Cities and 1998, this was the first time uplifting trance had ever made sense to me in a club context, the first time that almost mythical notion of the superclub experience had felt like a reality and not a bloated marketing ploy of overpaid DJ personalities. Or in other words - this set actually made it feel like 1999 again, rather just a bunch of '90s tunes being played in 2011.
Man With No Name closed the night, coming on at 4am. At this point I was expecting his harder-edged set to clear the floor, especially with the crowd pushing their mid-30s and probably running out of steam at this point. But while the floor did thin out a little, I was impressed by how many people stuck around. The crowd were genuinely fantastic throughout, it has to be said. Most of the people I spoke to said they hadn't been to a club for years and 30-something clubbers are notoriously hard to get moving, and yet from the start of the night to the finish, everyone was absolutely mad for every track and danced around as if mortgages, marriage and middle age were still distant pipe-dreams. MWNN himself was excellent, albeit playing a set that was clearly totally pre-ordained in Ableton. This flavour of dark, driving trance that pushes the energy up a level just when a normal trance record would drop out into a breakdown is far more to my tastes these days, and it was garnished with classics like Floor Essence, Teleport and Greece 2000.
Overall, it was a great night, even though everything that could possibly have gone wrong did so. My one musical criticism is that Quivver and Mick Park did treat it like a pop concert, just throwing in as many big melodies as possible. There are two mindsets to playing a classics set - you either think it's easy, because you're going to cause mayhem just through the quality of tunes, or you think it's hard, because you have to work much harder to put your own stamp on familiar tracks. Sam took the latter approach, and the result was the best set of the night by far.
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Mixes:
> Maximum Elevation [Progressive House]
> DI.FM 26th Anniversary Guest Mix [Progressive House]
> Live @ Dance:Love:Hub London, 11.10.2025
> Higher Peaks [Progressive House]
> Dance:Love:Hub Afterparty (The Return) 23.11.24
Like these sets? Come see me play live at Kibosh in Manchester: https://www.instagram.com/kibosh.mcr/
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