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I think my ears were broken...
After reading some others reviews, I gotta say, either my ears were broken or I heard something totally different than other people that have posted on this thread....
My night went a little something like this:
Arrived at 10 pm, into the Cool house (haus or however you want to spell it..), listened for a few minutes to Mark Oliver. I commented to others at that point that the sound seemed very "muffled" to me, and it was difficult to hear the set being played. None the less, it wasnt terrible.
I circled around, through the Gov, which sounded good, and was virtually empty at that point and went to the orange room to check out the new design. It looked pretty sweet I must say - and the addition of the lounge area was a welcome change.
The sound was good in the orange room, and the tracks were decent, and after lounging for a while I went back to the Cool House to catch Markus Schultz. I moved to the center of the room which was comforatably full, with room to dance, which was nice for a change. Markus' set started out very slowly, the crowd was ready to rage however, but he didnt seem to pick up on that. The tracks were nice, but far too slow for my taste, and after an hour I was a little numbed and bored by his set so I decided to go back to the orange room.
We went out front of the Guv, following the flow of traffic to get back to the orange room, but we were not allowed to proceed to the Guv main enterance as normal. Instead we were shunted up a set of stairs into the Lounge, and forced down past the Lounge stairs that lead to the Guv Main Room, past the drink and down a fire escape, finally exiting into the Guv Room. In total we spent almost a half an hour standing in a very packed and cramped line, very slowly creeping through the lounge and down the hallway.
This apparently cleared up a short time later as others didnt have to take this route. At first I was a little bit annoyed at this, being shoved down these tight hallways, crammed into small rooms with people pushing and shoving from behind - not cool. I think though that the Guv had this as an alternate route if something went wrong with the main Guv line - which apparently happened - so congrats to them for being organized and having a backup route to get people through the complex.
Anyways.....so back to the Orange room - the beats here were awesome, the sound was great, the room was not packed at all so there was plenty of dancing room - all and all - I had the most fun of the night in the Orange room with the breaks crowd....but...I really wanted to see Blank and Jones, so off we went to the Cool House once again.
Blank and Jones Set: The set was good, but like I said up top - either my ears were broken or the sound was terrible in the Cool House. The entire set overall was muffled, and difficult to hear the High's (no I wasnt wearing ear plugs) and melodic portions. I did enjoy portions of it - and I think Blank and Jones did a great job overall, I danced for most of their 2 hour set, only taking a break due to the heat near the end.
So we stayed for Armin - who wouldnt?
Armin Van Buuren: Im just going to say this up front - I thought his set was terrible. Firstly - the trouble that I heard with the sound (which apparently others didnt) definately caused problems with his set for me. The beat was extremly boring and relatively slow, and had a few melodic notes plugged in at Random. After attempting to dance to his set for an hour I gave up and retired to the bar/seating area in the Cool House to hear the rest - hoping he would recover. The entire set seemed disjointed, lead to nowhere, and didnt inspire any sort of feeling or enjoyment in me. I have seen Armen before - and loved his sets. This however I could barely tolerate. What it amounted to was an extremly heavy bass beat with distorted almost white noise in some portions on the down beat in a slow boring 4/4 pattern whith a random syth note thrown in on top. He also seems to be extensively using the sound of a percussion cow bell to actually mark the down beat because the beats themselves are so deep and drawn out, making any sort of distinction with the beat difficult if not impossible. The lead ups didnt go anywhere, there were no crocendos or real break downs, its almost like he would start to build up to something and then go nowhere but back to the same boring beat.
I did hear his traditional melancholy sound/synth's/piano rolls in some tracks, although he seems to be moving away from this some what.
I stayed for about two hours of his set before giving up and going to the Sky bar. As I said above - could be I had temporary hearing loss for several hours only in the Cool House, or it could be that his set was terrible on top of a poorly setup sound system in the Cool House.
From what I understand Armin has played 3 sets, in 3 different locations which require some what lengthy flights in between, in 3 days. I cant imagine that his 3rd set of the 3 is going to contain any inspiration - in fact the dude was probably pretty damn worn out.
I was thoroughly dissapointed in Armin and the Cool House in General. I did however have a blast in the Orange room and had a great time meeting several of you.
One last thing - The people at Labour of Love were great. Often I run into a lot of rude pushy people which can detract from the night overall. However, just like last year, people were nice, polite and friendly.
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