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Review: SENSATION Massive @ Centre Bell
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| Spin Laden |
| Well, I am finally going to bed now in Ottawa, no Beach Club for me. I will write a review when I wake up.. if I wake up :( |
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| DJ Charlie |
I don't feel like writting down an essay so i'll try to make it quick
First, let me talk about the VIP. My friends who came with had VIP tickets but not me so we all went to our respective entrance. I don't know for the rest of you, but I got in quicker than them. Sure we arrived at 1am cause we didn't care much if we missed the opening DJs. I also don't think it is necessary to have access to a particular section of the benches when people with regular tickets have access to another one. lol So for THIS event, VIPs were useless. I'm glad I saved myself a big 25$ !
So I got in from the 2nd floor... I had a nice view of the ice from there and I couldn't wait to start partying like an animal. The place was like half filled up at that moment. I haven't been to all the events that took place at Bell Center so I can't compare much with recent events.... but for my opinion, the setup sucked ! This is due mostly cause of the poor lighting show they had. For me it was like if they had placed a few 60W lighting bulb here and there to do there lighting effects. No lasers ??? WTF I was expecting crazy lights, enough to have a seizure. Sure the venue was awesome... but without the lights, its nothing.
Like in any huge room, it's hard to have good sound everywhere. We decided to stay in the middle front where the echoes were less noticable. There wasn't any 50" subs near us to blow our heads off. So for that it was great. I would say it was the perfect spot. Althought... during the trance sets, the highs were too much over peaked, it wasn't that enjoyable. Thank God I wear earplugs.
Pablo Ceballos : for the last our i heard from his set, it was alright but it barely warmed me up. He played Samim - Heater ! lol
6/10
Roger Sanchez : I wasn't at Sensation for him but his work was enough to get me going. He had a laser beamer !!! I thank him for giving us a little laser show while playing. I could say I appreciated his set.
7/10
Rank1 : hmmm, good thing his set lasted only an hour and a half. I just couldn't wait any longer to hear Armin. But I'm happy he didn't played cheesy tracks. All in all, it was a good set... I was just impatient for Armin.
8/10
Armin : His first 30 minutes weren't that great in my opinion. But he droped Dash Berlin - Till the Sky Falls Down and from that point I was :crazy: :eyespop: :crazy: :eyespop:
I love this song. I think I dropped a tear on it. From that point he did an awesome set. It wasn't the best I heard from him, mostly cause I'm currently not satisfied with the recent trance releases. But Armin always sets the dancefloor on fire and that night was no exception. My tune of the night, Stoveface & Terminal - Super Nature... boy I was in heaven ! He also play Rapideye Circa Forever, Solarstone - rollercoaster and finish with The Sound of Goodbye. I had memories of Aria during those tracks.
9/10 Why not a 10 ? I guess I was expecting way too much from him.
Eddie : Sorry I went to bed. LOL
It was great seeing some TAs, they know who they are.
Also, I was so hungry during the night, so I went to buy a hotdog ! HAHah best hotdog ever had.... Lol no seriously it was a good thing to have food over there. |
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| Big Boss |
Since I was last minute, I ended up paying $116 to hear Pablo and Roger. I had fun and it was worth it, just to experience a party in a legendary hockey arena.
I thought Pablo played better than Roger, but Roger had good energy. Whatever the track was before Pablo played "Tech This Out" was crazy. Hopefully someone could ID that track for me.
There was no way IN HELL that I was going to stay for the trance part of the show. Had to save my energy for tonight!!! |
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| Anne |
| My sister went with her boyfriend and they had a blast! she told me the music was really gooooood (surtout rank 1 and Armin ) En plus ce genre d'événement n'est pas sont genre elle n'avait pas aimé Resolution au jour de l'An...and she told me there were way less people than at resolution....so far i only hear good things about last night, exept she told me the lighting effects were not so great...I don't regret my choice for not going, i saved 100$ and went to piknic today for 7$ :toothless |
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| Bertuzz |
where are the reviews?
So I decided to go on Friday at the last minute, I couldn't resist.
Had a wedding Saturday, so had to leave early, get some sleep, so as a result I missed all of Ceballos and Sanchez. whatever.
showed up right as they were announcing Rank 1. Rank 1 meh. They played Breathing, I was happy. Armin came on. PRetty solid set. The crowd was eating up his hands in the sky blah blah. Left after 30 mins of Halliwell. Needed more sleep before the beach today.
All in all, pretty good. 100$ for 5 hours, kinda not worth it. Whatever, I'm glad I went. Was not blown away but would have been disappointed if I missed it. My friends asked me how it was, and I replied honestly, "you've been to 1, you've been to 20". Nothing really out of the ordinary.
Like Anne said, looking forward more to the Piknics tomorrow and next week. |
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| DK Man |
DJ’s
Roger Sanchez: I didn’t ear is whole set but the last hour was nice.
Rank1: I really didn’t know what to expect. They surprise me! I really enjoyed the way the work the transition and put the table for Armin.
AVB: He started off quite slow playing melodic tracks and jump into the harder stuff to finish off with some classics. I preferred his set at BeB but still a great set has always!
Eddie Halliwell: I was expecting this guy to really continue the party but the Trance he played was like 6-7 years old. The style was not at all comparable to the Armin, SVD & Ferry of today. Plus he played way too much with the volume and he scratches CDJ like a Hip-Hop DJ! What the ….? I didn’t hate it! It’s just hard to fallow Armin and he really changed the atmosphere of the party.
SET-UP
Layout: Placing the DJ booth on the wide side compare to Resolution was different. Felt like the Koolhaus in TO.
Sound: Like everyone said if you weren’t in middle the sound was awful.
Lighting & Visual: This was really minimal. For that type of party with 8000+ people & World class DJ they should have put little more effort into it!
Crowd: Dress Code: Black… It’s disappointing that there were a lot of people who didn’t understand it! Hats off to all the stylish ladies!:eyes:
Overall
Pretty good, but it should be easy to make Resolution 2008 Better!
Dom |
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| Spin Laden |
Sensation Black arrived last night and it looks like its here to stay. Pretty much everyone was wearing black and with that, it was a pretty cool effect, actually. There wasn't much chatter on TA here about Sensation; TA is such a small community indeed, hense the arrogance from balenblanc :p
In all fairness, you guys do a lot of work behind the scenes and last night it all came together impressively. I tip my hat to you, balenblanc.
If you look at the first few pics in that other thread, you'll notice how sparse the crowd was. I arrived at 10PM, hoping to catch all the house beats before leaving earlier than usual. Speaking of beats, this is how I rated the djs:
DJ Malik: I was expecting a set entirely different from the download that was posted on here and also from the House-Pacifique radio show Friday night. While he did add some muster to his set, I did manage to hear a few tracks from that TA set, and it wasn't an energetic opening set, imo. I thought his track selection was average at best. In all fairness to him, there wasn't much of a crowd to work with. 7/10
Pablo Ceballos: excellent set, some tribal, some prog, some dirty stuff all around. On this night, who needed Chus.. he was that good. 8.5/10
Roger Sanchez: S-man delivered big, imo. He dropped some big house hits from the past few years, did some mash-ups of his own productions and generally created an electric party vibe up in the Centre Bell, yo. 8.5/10
Rank 1: started off the set well with some tech house, which led me to optimistically believe he would keep the funky beats going. That didn't happen :p He dropped Deadmaus' Faxing Berlin, first time I heard that in a big room..overrated track, imo.
The latter half of Rank's set was all trance and this is where I tried to do the Mizza trance hands but to no avail :tongue3. I didn't mind listening to the set high up in the rafters, however... a nice effect with all the laaaazzzzerrrrss. I just can't dance to it. 6/10
Armin: This is the closest I've ever gotten to AVB but by this point, the trancehead mosh pit was unbearable so I listened to a few tracks from the back. I really can't give him a rating here since I left shortly thereafter, but what I heard was a giant meh. He also had the volume up to max in the beginning.. killed everyone's ears.
Marcus, I think I saw you with a bunch of groupies.. are you like, 6'2" or something? At this point, I was a broken legged mess anyways. I will make a point of introducing myself at Black and Blue, considering the rest of TA doesn't go to massives anymore :toothless
All in all, it was a successful night for Balenblanc. By about 1AM the dancefloor was jammed packed, almost to Resolution-like proportions, so it was a definite sellout for sure. And the house djs delivered, even moreso than I expected. However the lineup should have been flipped-flopped, as the trance sets killed the dirty, sexy Montreal vibe, imo.
Setup: 8/10, some decent laaaazerrrs
Music/Vibe: 9/10 until Rank 1. After that, 7/10
Women: 69/10 .. just as good as Balenblanc, I'd say.
Sound: 9/10 considering the logistics.
Overall: 8/10
Pros: most showed up effortlessly this time (after 12AM) and the dancefloor was bearable too; the shisha waffling to the ceiling of the arena; paramedics were very efficient, though I seemed to see them almost every 30 mins on the dancefloor.
Cons: Centre Bell turns off its cold water from the fountains this time, and of course bottled water sales increase; some ppl need to shower before they go out - simple as that; concession stands were selling only chips and crap like that.. where are the sandwiches, the fruits, the powerbars :whip::whip: |
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| DJ Charlie |
| quote: | Originally posted by DK Man
Dress Code: Black… It’s disappointing that there were a lot of people who didn’t understand it! Hats off to all the stylish |
I would rather say "a lot of people didn'T knew there was a dress code"
I wasn't in black and for a simple reason... I have other things to do in life than to browse a website of an event, which I had already bought tickets for it months ago, looking for dress code information. Nothing was mentioned on the flyers neither mentionned by promoters when it was first announced. I can imagine pretty much everybody who weren't in black have the same reasons.
So some people didn't do their promoting job correctly concerning the dress in black thing.
When I learned everybody was to be in black... it was already too late to go change. Else I would have done it. |
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| Spin Laden |
lol, I saw a couple completely dressed in white.. they must've saw the words "Balenblanc" on the flyer and took it literally :p
You will always get some ppl who don't follow the code, but from where I was, I'd say 80-90 percent were wearing black. |
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| Master Kush |
A few things that stood out.
Setup
It was different (in a mostly good way) than years past as the dj booth was on one side of 'the red line', not at the end. Still, I did think that the less than normal sized crowd may have helped. I mean by this that there was a confortable amount of space to dance for most of the night. I would say the crowd size helped things go along smoothly throughout the night. I do wonder and hope that the organizers get a bit of a message from this and decide to book talent a little more creatively (eg. no more Armin). Projection screens were nice minus the barrage of adverts on them half the night. Lights were ok, with a more 'darker' feel.
My biggest complaint of the party was that the sound was way too loud after the trance came on. My ears are still ringning to this minute.
Music
ceballos: Monotone (if not a little boring) but solid. Was nice to hear Heater and Doppelwhipper (remix i believe).
Sanchez. Great opener. A bit diva houseish in the middle. Finished off strong.
Rank 1. A little better than i thought they'd be. But the set was somewhat all over the place as it lacked any real flow.
Armin. Loves to interact with the crowd. Nonetheless, he was too epic for my tastes. Hopefully I won't be forced to see him again for a long while (or maybe even ever) since I've seen him too many times (4-5).
Overall. I had a great time and it was worth going to because of that. But like a girl at the party mentioned to me, "It was fun, but I've been to better parties". |
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| Oneeleven |
| quote: | Originally posted by Spin Laden
lol, I saw a couple completely dressed in white.. they must've saw the words "Balenblanc" on the flyer and took it literally :p
You will always get some ppl who don't follow the code, but from where I was, I'd say 80-90 percent were wearing black. |
Heh heh.. I thought of wearing all white just to be an ass$@!~ |
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| Marcus007 |
| quote: | | Marcus, I think I saw you with a bunch of groupies.. are you like, 6'2" or something? At this point, I was a broken legged mess anyways. I will make a point of introducing myself at Black and Blue, considering the rest of TA doesn't go to massives anymore |
yes, I'm a giant.
Malick: Smooth opener...
Ceballos: REALLY dirty house set... some chunky beats that got me movinggggg
Roger: Came on with a bang, got a little boring half way through, but killed it at the end. He had some great buildups.
Rank1: good track selection.... bad mixing... boots in the dryer...
Armin: Ahhhhhh... he played really hard... he didn't give anyone a second to react. Jesus pose and climbing on the turntable included. :eyes:
Eddie: Banging set but I think him and Rank1 shouldve traded spots. Rank 1 wouldve been better closing the party cuz 9-11 everyone just wants slow down music. Also, can somebody tell me if Eddie is gay? He kept staring at me and my girlfriend and I started to wonder.
HAPPY BIRTHDAY LEA!
Really good crowd... very hetero... I was surprised.... Roadkill was played 3 times... I liked the booth on the side of the rink this time and not the front... all in all a really good party :D |
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