Timewarp is a festival is a techno festival that takes place in Mannheim, Germany once a year around Easter time. As a smaller city with a population of only a little over 300,000, upon arrival, it was easy to see who the revellers and who the Mannheim natives were. There was a stark contrast between middle-aged people wearing normal, drab winter wear, and people in their 20s and 30s with neon phat pants, sunglasses at night, and hair crazy space-age haircuts.
Much like the only other “European Massive” I’ve been to so far (I Love Techno in Ghent, Belgium), the hours before the party in the streets of Mannheim were madness. The train-station was like pre-party central, with raver kids in drinking beer at the entrance, and dancing to the techno blaring out of their portable stereo systems. Every once in a while, random cheering would start and create a chain reaction with the rest of the revellers in the area.
We had some dinner and made our way to the party around 10:30pm. There were armies of party busses in the parking lot, filled with partiers from every corner of Europe. When we got to the line, we were greeted with people cheering, yelling and laughing in high anticipation of getting in. Although the line-up was very short, the little time spent waiting in line was enjoyable with everyone having a last drink and having a good time.
When we got in, I was a little bit surprised with the layout. With the line-up describing the areas as “Floor I-V”, I was expecting a large, multi-levelled building. Instead, I saw several different hangars, including a food, chill-out, and coat-check hangar.
The sight of the coat-check hangar was a little bit unsettling as all I saw was a huge mob waiting to get into a small door. I was expecting something like this as I heard coat-check last year was a nightmare. At first we didn’t think it would be so bad, but after waiting in the mob for about 5 minutes, we realized people were just pushing to get to the front. During the 20-30 minute wait, the discomfort and frustration just kept building with the constant pressure of the people behind us pushing to get in. I’m not trying to over-react here, but this was literally one of the worst coat-check set-ups I’ve ever seen. I was at the point of losing it as I neared the front.
I finally entered the coat-check in style, by flying through the entrance due to the pushing, while almost tripping and falling onto the ground. I was kindly greeted by a single security officer whose job it was to control the line, who yelled at me telling me not to push. As if I had a choice! It was also nice seeing others cutting the line by going through the exit of the coat-check hangar…
We decided to start by checking out Tiefschwarz on Floor III. On the way, the corridor leading to all the hangars was quite rammed and hectic. Upon entering Floor III, I was quite surprised to see how rammed it was already! The room was pretty much at capacity, and it was only around 11pm. I guess Tiefschwarz has quite a following in Germany.
Although I’ve never seen Tiefschwarz before, his sets have always been a favourite of mine. I love his more chill, but very trippy minimal that he plays. Surprisingly, he wasn’t really playing like this at all at Timewarp. He played a lot more banging, but equally as trippy and creepy. Lots of intense build-ups with great hooks that were making the crowd lose it at this early hour of the night. This is one of the things I love about big parties in Europe. People are partying at 100% from the moment they step in the door (or even on the streets/in the line beforehand!) I only stayed in this room for about 30-45 minutes as I knew I’d be checking out Tiefschwarz later on during the week at Weekend in Berlin, and wanted to check out one of the bigger rooms.
One comment about the Floor III and IV area is that in half of Floor IV the music from Floor III is clearly audible. This could have been really annoying if I had wanted to check out any of the DJs on Floor IV, but luckily that wasn’t the case.
We then made our way to Floor I to check out Chris Liebing. After being in Floor III and IV at the beginning, I was a bit worried that this would be a low calibre event due to the size and the lighting of these rooms. However, once I entered Floor I, those worries were completely shattered. Floor I was a large room, about the size of a football field, holding what I would guess to be around 12,000 people. There was a very large screen at the back with some cool visuals, and the sound was really amazing for a room of that size. I had never heard sound that good in a venue of that size before. Usually when you go to a large party, the quality of sound gets sacrificed a bit, but this was not the case at Timewarp.
People were already quite in the mood to party, whistling, cheering, hands in the air, and having a great time. As far as my night goes, Liebing was the opener of the party, and he did an excellent job. This was the first time I had seen the guy in quite some time, and I was reminded of why I liked him so much when I saw him the first time. He got the crowd in the mood by not only playing a great set, but by being right into it. He was smiling, clapping his hands, and bouncing around for his entire set. His energy was quite contagious, and the crowd fed right off of it.
Cox was on next: one of the DJs I was looking forward to the most. I thought that because he was playing a techno event like Timewarp that he would play a rare, quality techno set. How wrong I was. Instead, he played a lot of really cheesy tracks and uninspiring tracks. The pinnacle of his set was the jaw-droppingly horrendous act of playing Mauro Picotto – “New Time, New Place”. Maybe I’m over reacting, but I just left the room and didn’t give him a second chance after this. I’m sorry Coxy, but although you’ve been responsible for some of the best parties I’ve ever been to, the last couple of times I’ve seen you, you’ve really stank it up, and I’m starting to wonder if you’ve lost it.
After I left Cox, I looked at the timetable, and realized that I didn’t have many options. I decided to go back to Floor III to give Magda a chance. Now, I’ve never been a fan of Magda. I’ve seen her many, many times, and I have never really liked her. That’s not to say that she’s not a talented DJ, she just hasn’t been my thing. That said, am I ever glad I gave her a chance! Much to my surprise, she really impressed me! Although the bpm was a little bit slower and took a bit to get used to, the bad-ass tech house she was throwing down set the vibe for the room which was more about funk and attitude than the hands in the air vibe on Floor I. I had almost written Magda off as a DJ completely before Timewarp, but now I can really see why lots of people are huge fans.
Here’s a couple of my fav tunes that she played
(last tune: click box - sugar pain)
After Magda, as per request of one of my friends, we checked out Pet Duo. I can’t really say much about these two as it was a little bit too hard and banging for my liking. However, I’m glad I gave them a try, because according to my friend, in order to complete my “German techno rave experience”, I should spend a couple of minutes in a hard techno room.
I then decided to check out the man who has apparently been playing a marathon set at every Timewarp since the beginning: Laurent Garnier. He had a tent basically to himself that was outside and away from the rest of the hangars. It was a nice change of pace in this room, as Laurent Garnier was playing a lot housier. I also really liked the set up of this room. I didn’t stay very long in here though as I will be seeing Laurent Garnier vs. Agoria all night long party in May.
When I went to Ibiza last summer, I was pretty disappointed with Sven’s performance at Cocoon @ Amnesia. Given he was a DJ that I had been looking forward to seeing for a very long time, it only made his what I thought to be a mediocre set that much more disappointing. This year Timewarp, I was looking forward to giving him another chance, and boy was I ever schooled.
As I walked onto Floor II for the first time, my anticipation for the rest of the party went through the roof (it was 5am, meaning an amazing NINE hours of partying remained, lol). The lighting was incredible, the visuals on the screens in the back were that much better, there were huge claw like structures hanging from the ceiling, and they even had dancers in white body suits dancing on multi-levelled platforms on the stage behind Sven. Floor II was clearly the main area of the party, and knowing that I would soon be seeing Richie play for 7 hours in this room made me realize how epic this night would turn out to be.
(below is a really good example of the visuals on Floor II)
The energy on Floor II felt like there was a constant low current of electric charge going through out the crowd, making your hair on the back of your neck and arms stand on end almost continuously. At 5am, I knew warm-up time was over, and that phase 2 of the party was just beginning.
I started dancing near the back of the room for a bit, and quickly realized that I hadn’t been to the elevated part of the room at the back yet. I made my way towards it, climbed up to the top, turned around and my jaw dropped. I knew that there were 12-15,000 people in that room, but knowing and seeing are two very different things, especially when you’ve never been in a room that size before. While up on this platform, during the air raid of bombs that Sven was dropping, it seemed like almost everyone in the room was jumping up and down at the climaxes, many on sitting on the shoulders of others, absolutely losing it.
Even though I only caught the last hour of Sven’s 4.5 hour set, that last hour was incredible. It was just track after track of big room, massive tracks that had the room’s energy steadily increasing right up until the end of his set, where most of the crowd looked like they didn’t even know what to do with themselves. Hearing these huge tracks while watching the crowd losing it, under the amazing lasers/light show is a memory that I will not soon forget.
Once Sven was done, I quickly ran out of the room to avoid hearing Alter Ego. After the horrible performance they put on at I Love Techno in November, I had no desire to see them whatsoever.
We made our way back to Room III to check out Loco Dice. I had seen Loco Dice once before at DEMF in 2007, and he was ok. I really liked his more druggy and minimal style of 2005/2006, and was kind of disappointed to see the new tech house direction that he took. However, he ended up playing one of my favourite sets of Timewarp. He was played a really chunky and sexy tech house set. Although there were a couple of pretty boring/sleeper tracks, it was a very, very good set. It had everyone in the room (especially the large number of girls) shaking their asses. The booth party in the back really added to the atmosphere too. There must have been about 20-30 people in there, all drinking, partying, and having a good time. The antics in the booth were also quite entertaining. There was one guy with a towel on his head, standing up on the most elevated level of the booth (a highly dangerous idea), swinging a towel around, and another girl with a top hat, dancing beside him, opening and closing an umbrella. Going in from the high rave energy of Floor II to the sleazy, funked out vibe of Floor III was night and day. It was really a nice change of pace.
The only problem with this room was that there was some serious sound issues causing multiple train wrecks. The sound was also red-lining way too easily. This wasn’t Loco Dice’s fault though as the same thing happened later during Luciano and Ricardo’s set.
At around 7am, I decided to check out Floor II again for the start of Richie’s set. There was an unbelievable amount of people there. The room was literally, and quite surprisingly given the size of the room, rammed. I knew that he would be playing for 7 hours, so I went back to Floor III for the rest of Loco’s set.
Afterward, I decided to check out a DJ I had heard much about, but never anything from – DJ Murphy. I was a little bit worried as he was playing after Pet Duo, but a couple of friends I was with whose taste in music I really respect insisted that I check him out. He was playing noticeably faster than the rest of the acts I had seen that night, but not quite as fast as Pet Duo. Although he played at a higher BPM, his music was very funky and bouncy, and it was interesting to see his unique addition of scratching to his sets. Murphy has a style of his own, and I can say I was quite impressed with it. Although I didn’t spend too long listening to him, I would definitely check him out again.
At 8am, Luciano hit the decks. I was pretty excited to see this guy as his recent Essential Mix has been in frequent rotation on my iPod since it was recorded. Needless to say, I was quite disappointed with him. First of all, I like deep stuff, but when it’s 8am, I really don’t want to hear 8 minute long flute solos with the bass cut. Second of all, in every single set I’ve heard of Luciano, dating back to a year and a half ago, he’s played both Cevin Fisher's - The Freaks Come Out and Dennis Ferrer - Transitions. Now, don’t get me wrong; I actually really like both of these songs, but come on! Buy some new records buddy! Playing deep house flute or piano riffs on top of them does not constitute new music, especially when it doesn’t even sound good. I don’t know, maybe I’m being a bit harsh, but considering how much hype is surrounding this guy recently, and given the fact that he has his own record label, it’s pretty disappointing that he seems to have a very limited ability to buy new tracks.
After getting fed up with Luciano, I decided to start the marathon of Richie’s set.
The room was still quite full, but there was more than enough room to dance. I was worried that I’d hear the nonsense that he played in the first 2 hours of his set at Fabric two weeks prior, but luckily he left those records at home. Although he started off pretty slow, it was nice and groovy. I knew that I’d have to be patient to hear the bangers later on in the night.
Richie is the master of teasing and surprises in his sets. He would build a track forever, then finally when the bass hits and you think it’s the climax, he’d cut the bass again after 2 beats and build it some more. There were periods of time where he would do this for 20 minutes or so before dropping a track. This is a very risky thing to do as he could have easily lost the crowd’s attention, but it worked most of the times and caused explosions of epic proportions when he finally dropped the beat. There were also times where he would be playing a very minimal track with the bass cut and a monster beat would come out of nowhere. It was almost like slowly driving down a residential street and then getting broad-sided by a car doing 100mph.
Here’s an example of that teasing:
There were a couple of surprises during the 7 hours of his set such as:
I’d have to say that I was kind of disappointed with the M_NUS visuals. I have seen Ali Demerel do way better. A lot of it was kind of simple and cheesy. I guess it is kind of hard to have 7 hours of good material. However, it wasn’t all bad, and there were some really good points such as this one:
Also, not many noticed as he was off to the side, but when Richie went to the washroom, or the 30 minutes that he was too ed to play (lol), it was actually Ali playing. I found this pretty hiliarious. The guy was loving it when he was playing too.
The booth party was full on in Richie’s set too, with everyone partying and getting smashed, as can be seen here:
It was pretty damn cool seeing the who’s-who of techno (Luciano, Sven, Ricardo, Carola, etc) all dancing in the booth and watching Richie at work. Although this is a controversial statement, after what I saw at Fabric 2 weeks prior, and the amount of people in the room to see Richie on Saturday at Timewarp, I would venture to say that Richie is the most popular techno DJ around right now. It really makes a Canadian proud knowing that someone from Windsor has reached this level of stardom.
Richie’s set in general was very well put together. He built it quite nicely, and had everyone going well into the afternoon. His mediocre set at Fabric 2 weeks prior worried me about him playing such a long set at Timewarp, but his set at Fabric didn’t even hold a candle to his set at Timewarp. Not only that, it was pretty impressive how in 7 hours, I only recognized 4 tracks from his set 2 weeks ago. I think that, along with how much fun he was clearly having shows that he pulls out all the stops for Timewarp.
The only complaint I have about Richie’s set, is during the last 2 hours or so, the technique of cutting the bass, then letting the track build, teasing, turning the volume down, then slowly building it up was getting a bit repetitive.
Other than that, Richie’s set was absolutely epic. I have seen him 12 or 13 times now, and I think that was probably the most fun I’ve had seeing him. Standing in the middle of the dancefloor at 13:00, fighting tooth-and-nail with exhaustion, around thousands of people was an experience that is hard to describe with words. Richie is my favourite DJ, and I think this is the ideal atmosphere to see him in.
I couldn’t really find any Youtube videos that accurately show the madness of Richie’s set, but I think that has more to do with the fact that you can’t really understand how good his set was based on a 2-minute track. His set was more about the story than about particular moments.
I decided to check out the last 30 minutes of Ricardo’s set because he’s a DJ that does not often come to Canada. I know Ricardo has a tendency to play pretty weird when he plays on his own, but I was very, very impressed with his set. Very groovy, techy goodness with lots of Spanish accapellas. I would have loved to hear his set outside somewhere, as I think it would have been perfect under the sun. Although it didn’t affect his set whatsoever, how ed Ricardo was during his set actually somewhat affected my enjoyment of it. I know this sounds a bit much, but the dude was seriously ed up, and literally the most out of it person that I saw the entire night. It’s none of my business really, but this guy needs to get his together!
This was the highlight of Ricardo’s set, one of the highlights of the night, and generally one of the most epic experiences of my party life hearing this at 11:30am:
Given how I’m an old, somewhat jaded partier who doesn’t get impressed very easily, it is rare that I get blown away by an event. It is even rarer that a week afterward, I remember the party with a feeling of longing, wishing I was still there. For all you techno lovers out there, Timewarp is the pinnacle of techno. With an all-star line-up, amazing sound, production and vibe, it really doesn’t get much better than this. Anyone techno-head out there reading this should really try to make it out at least once to this party if they can. I know that there is at least one more Timewarp in my future.
ÖZmözis
Review of the century...
nice!
magikb
Wow, what an awesome review Graham. :)
I am happy to hear that you had such a great time. We had already discussed this previously, but as you said this will for sure be the massive that sticks out in your head for years to come.
I know having done the ones I have, I know I definitely need to make it to Timewarp.
I know this was Kate & Paul's second time round. Did Jay blown away by it too?
rabbitjoker
quote:
Originally posted by The Highroller
I know that there is at least one more Timewarp in my future.
After that (incredible) review, I hope there is one in store for me too.
RayRayy
Great vids and reviews dude..
Not surprised by yur review with Luciano...I used to so pumped watching his vid from his parties at DC-10 at Ibiza but hearing some his recent stuff including his recent EM...en boring.
Nata
WOW Graham thats an epic review for what seems like an epic party
I was planning on hitting it up next year, after reading this I am for sure going
patpicos
amazing review. Really makes me want to go next year...
the 2nd video( 9mins) was sick. Sounds like it was liebing! (loved him at FW in december)
the vids from magda were ok..
going through the rest now!
how does timewarp compare to I <3 Techno in belgium?
patpicos
quote:
Originally posted by RayRayy
Great vids and reviews dude..
Not surprised by yur review with Luciano...I used to so pumped watching his vid from his parties at DC-10 at Ibiza but hearing some his recent stuff including his recent EM...en boring.
i feel the same about luciano, most of his sets i have end up being deleted for being too mellow, melodic.
MarkT
awesome review Graham!!!
I heard a much more abbreviated review from Paul, who was impressed with your mastery of the marathon German techno party :D
Kate Manus
quote:
Originally posted by The Highroller
For all you techno lovers out there, Timewarp is the pinnacle of techno. With an all-star line-up, amazing sound, production and vibe, it really doesn’t get much better than this. Anyone techno-head out there reading this should really try to make it out at least once to this party if they can. I know that there is at least one more Timewarp in my future.
awesome review Graham :)
And I echo these sentiments about Timewarp being an amazing techno party! Well worth the distance.
PS - glad you seemed to enjoy a bit of Murphy's set too ;)
_EuG_
Great Read, sounds like it was one hell of a party!
Kate Manus
I would also have to agree that Carl was a bit of a disappointment... of the 8 or 9 times I have seen him, I was probably least impressed this time. ahhh well... can't say there weren't plenty of other options! :)
