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Excellent night. My first time at Vola, and I really like that place.
Long-ass fucking review coming up...
Sound: I forgot my earplugs at home. Bleah. Yohan told me it wouldn't be too bad, and for the most part, he was right. The sound system there is VERY good; those dynacords are incredible. The bass sounded extremely good and was very clean. No distortion at all. The highs were far too strong; it seemed like some de-essing compression or just plain EQing would have helped. The whooshes and build-ups in were just too loud during some parts of the night. This was when I regretted not having my ER-20s. *sigh*. My ears aren't still ringing, so it can't have been TOO bad, though. After about 4:30 or so, everything sounded much better; I think somebody must have turned down the sound by then. Chris kept redlining the mixer but the system seemed to handle it OK; I never heard any obvious distortion. There are no acoustic dead zones in the club, which is bad when the highs are too strong and I can't find a spot on the dancefloor where I can dance without blowing my ears out. :P
Lights & Deco: This was OK. They had all the New Year's party favours and crap. I got sprayed with silly string a couple of times, though I managed to block it with a well placed middle finger the second time. They did spray the crowd with quite a bit of fog throughout the night; I don't really mind this. They only sprayed it on half the dancefloor, so if you didn't like it, you could go over to the other side of the room.
To the asshole light op who kept ringing the siren: DIE DIE DIE. HOLY FUCK. YOU DO NOT INTERRUPT AIRWAVE'S MELODIC TRANCE BREAKDOWN BY PLAYING A SIREN. EVER. SERIOUSLY. YOU SHOULD DIE. Honestly, some prick kept ringing a fucking siren every 10 minutes for the whole night. This is not a hiphop club and if Airwave wanted to add a siren to his track, he'd fucking do it himself. I was so angry at this. I can somewhat understand putting a siren over a techy track; that sorta works. But to play a siren over a harmonious trance breakdown... that's insane. Don't people understand that the siren CLASHES with the melody? You might as well just be overlaying Airwave's music with a track of somebody pounding their fists on a piano. I could tell that Airwave was getting fucking pissed. I urge whoever was operating that siren to please get some musical training and think twice before they ruin any more wonderful moments on the dancefloor.
Venue: No major complaints. The air was very dry, but it's winter and I guess they don't have a full blown climate control system in there. There were some sketchy moments; a bunch of Asians pouring grey goose down some girl's throat on the dancefloor, some random Asian lady grabbing Veronica's water bottle, etc. But not nearly as bad as guv.
Opening DJ: Caught the tail end of his set, and I liked it. Good stuff.
Mr. Morton: Chris owned us with hard beats and classic trance. Kamaya Painters... LOL. Chris's opening set was all classic trance, which he led into a great midnight countdown which was supremely well set-up and perfectly timed. Great job. His closing set was all hard, banging shit, which I really got into. His mixing was a tad off until maybe 4 or 4:30; afterwards it was all perfect, well-timed, and fast-paced.
Airwave: HOLY FUCK. He just kept impressing me more and more throughout the night. He was mixing on the CDJs, but he had his laptop hooked up with ableton and a keyboard, which he used as a synth to freestyle little melodic bits which he layered over the tracks. He kept playing melodies on the keyboard throughout the night, and even mashed up shit over Chris's opening set. He's quite good on the keys, but I'd expect no less given his musical background. He also used a bunch of effects, both the ableton ones for his synth, and the built-in filters and delays on the pioneer mixer. I think he overused the delays; they were getting a tad annoying at one point.
At one point right before Laurent got on, Chris was playing a tune (can't remember the name right now), and Laurent figures out what key it's in without any headphones, starts playing along on his keyboard, and realizes that it's a TINY bit flat (probably less than a quartertone or so due to Chris having adjusted the tempo of his track a bit without using master tempo). What does he do? He cocks his head to the side, listening intently to the music, fiddles with one of the knobs on his controller, and alters the pitch of his synth so it's perfectly in tune with the track that Chris was playing. He has such an incredible attention to detail and a very good musical ear; this is why he is so amazing.
His mixing was a tad off; there were at least 1 or 2 noticeable messups and several other minor imperfections, but whatever. I'm sure it would have been perfect had he been sitting there beatmatch everything perfectly, but he spent the whole night hammering away on that keyboard and consequently had less time to get the transitions done flawlessly. I didn't care. He was so good that I can't possibly fault him for being a tad out of practice in the mixing department.
He must have taken a hint from Chris, because he kept playing classics all night, much of it his own material. He opened with Save Me and freestyled his own countermelody over top of it. Some other tracks he played:
Airwave - Urban Touareg
Airwave - Alone in the Dark
The Green Martian - Industry
Sasha - Xpander
Three Drives - Greece 2000
Energy52 - Cafe Del Mar [Three N One Mix]
+ Tons more that I recognized but can't remember...
He fucking played the cafe del mar melody on his synth too... straight 16th notes at 138 bpm. Supreme talent.
He played a lot of harder, techier shit too. He kinda went with the old-school set programming style, going between hard as fuck and trancey as fuck every 30 minutes, which was absolutely fine with me. I never got sick of dancing to his tunes.
Overall: 9/10. Very very good night. Would be 10/10 if it weren't for that ****** on the siren.
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I am nobody. Nobody is perfect. Therefore I am perfect.
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