Markus Schulz at Stereo - A night I won't soon forget

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​Note: This article was ultimately posted on Markus Schulz Facebook page. It was a real honour. Thanks Markus!

This is hardly an event review because there are almost no words to explain the experience I had at Stereo last Friday night in Montreal when Markus Schulz delivered an EPIC 7+ hour set. I knew coming in that this was a special event simply because it was held at the Stereo Nightclub and when you mix a world class club with the sounds of Markus Schulz you know magic happens. This show was sold out well over a month ago so the anticipation for this event was through the roof well before Markus even stepped off the plane.

Markus Schulz blew my expectations out of the window as he absolutely played his heart out with a relentless set that had a little something for everybody. There were some vocal tracks and uplifting trance beats here and there but the core of his set was heavy with dark progressive trance that electrified the dance floor. When Markus Schulz unleashed his 'Dakota' style that's when he truly connected with the crowd and the dancing reached its highest of highs.

Most of the night was spent in the dark as the light effects were kept at a minimal on purpose. You won't see any flashy lighting effects or huge LED screens at Stereo because what's truly important is the pristine sound quality, the music, and the people on the dance floor.

There were around 10 glow kids in the middle of the dance floor waving around their light gloves and giving everyone a mini light show. Each one of them were showing so much love for Markus for the entire 7 hours.

The rest of the crowd showed their appreciation for Markus by chanting his name numerous times throughout the night. There were a lot of moments during the set that were goosebump worthy.

Can you believe that Markus actually took the time to take pictures and give autographs to his fans after the show? By this time it's already past 11 am and he hasn't sat down in over 7 hours and yet you still see him smiling and being personable to his fans like nothing happened. What a champ.

Afterwards Markus had this to say:

Local Montreal trance duo DJ Offset had this to say about Markus' performance:

I can state without hesitation that was the best live set that I've ever experienced in my life so far. Thanks so much to Stereo and Markus Schulz for a very memorable night and I hope to do it again next year!

Skrillex in Ottawa - WOW!

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This was my view of Skrillex at Ottawa Bluesfest:

And this is my view from Ritual later that night:

It's hard to put into words how much of a good time I had last night as Skrillex put on a mind-blowing show and really gave his all to please the crowd. Skrillex' energy was infectious as it appeared that the entire Bluefest crowd was giving just as much energy and love back to him in a high powered set that surpasses the energy level of most if not all major DJs I've seen. Skrillex is really a maestro out there as he commanded total control of the crowd from his spaceship DJ cockpit reminiscent of an old Star Wars film which later levitated 10-20ft above the stage.

The night was filled with almost everything Skrillex as he played tracks from his Scary Monsters and Nice Sprites and Bangarang albums. He also exhibited flawless mixing without the use of his former Ableton Live/laptop setup from last year. Is he proving to everyone that he isn't just pressing play? Well if he is then he proved it beyond all doubt on Saturday as Skrillex was rocking it out with 2 USB sticks, 2 CDJs, headphones and a mixer. My personal set highlight was when he played his Kill Everybody track and mashed it up with Knife Party's Internet Friends drop that just messed me up in a very good way. What also worked well was the use of all his moombathon tracks such as Make it Bum Dem track collab with Damian "JR. Gong" Marley. If it couldn't get any better Skrillex actually played my all time number one Beastie Boys track Sabotage that had me singing to the top of my lungs.

Unfortunately I decided that I needed to duck out 25 minutes early in order to hightail it over to the Ritual Nightclub so I could be one of the 100 Bluesfest band holders that got free entry into Skrillex' official after party later that night. It was almost physically painful to leave such an electric atmosphere but luckily my gamble paid off as I managed to be one of the last few to get in for free. I had no idea what to expect from the second part of the night; will Skrillex only show up for a few minutes and play a couple tracks or will he give us rabid fans a proper set? Well the answer came around 12:30 am as Skrillex suddenly showed up totally amped up and ready to take over from Koan Sound who played a fun and eclectic set. The difference of seeing Skrillex so far away at the Bluesfest stage to having him perform in such an intimate venue like at Ritual was massive. At Bluesfest you were confronted with an assault of the senses as the whole stage setup took you on visual journey into Skrillex' music; at Ritual I felt like I was treated with a special performance between himself and a few hundred of his friends. Skrillex completely immersed himself in his set that had everyone jumping up and down in excitement. I'm not quite sure how else to explain it because you really needed to be there to understand how great Ritual was that night. I'm a big fan of Skrillex' video tour of South America so when he dropped Dream - This isn't House at Ritual I went nuts.

The next day Skrillex complimented Ottawa and its fans in absolutely one of the best ways possible:

 

Thanks Skrillex and to everyone that came out and made it special.

My Paul Van Dyk Recap

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Can't believe it's already been 3+ weeks since this event took place! On April 13th Paul Van Dyk (PVD), a true trance legend, took the stage at Barrymore's Music hall and brought Ottawa some banging tunes to get everyone dancing. Paul Van Dyk gave us a night to remember as he performed a very energetic 2 hour set with only a few melodic breaks in between.What I really appreciated about this night was that in the past you would usually have to travel to the Circus Afterhours club in Montreal to hear this kind of sound but since the EDM scene has exploded in 2012 trance fans can be treated to a very special night right here in our city.

Paul Van Dyk played a lot from his latest album 'Evolution' which was more than fine from my perspective because I've been digging his Verano track for well over a month now. Another strong track from the album that's been getting some traction in the EDM world is 'The Ocean (feat. Arty)'  which is a beautifully melodic track mixed in with some dirty trance beats:

This is the Paul Van Dyk that I love and I really respect him for sticking to his roots throughout his career. Speaking of sticking to his roots, here's another track that I feel was one of the reasons I danced my butt off that night: 

Paul Van Dyk feat Ummet Ozcan - Dae Yor

This track alone stands up well to the kind of beats PVD has been delivering his entire career and evocative of what he brought us on that night.

If you're interested in reading more about Paul Van Dyk you can check out a few enlightening articles I've read on him since his gig in Ottawa:

A PVD feature in the Vancouver Sun (April 19th, 2012)

PVD interview on lessthan3.com - Check it out to read what he thinks about Skrillex.

A recent interview posted on Youtube - Fast forward to 5:35 to get to the controversial stuff.

Here's the official recap video from DNA Presents:

My Above & Beyond Event Recap

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Soundprank warming up the crowd Ottawa welcomed the 5th ranked in the DJ Mag top 100 poll Above & Beyond (UK) with a completely sold out show last Saturday as the Nation's Capital EDM fans assembled at Barrymore's to enjoy an epic evening.

This is the Above & Beyond (A&B) Tour Bus which was located just besides Barrymore's. You could basically see Tony McGuiness chilling out in the back just before the show. There were a few girls hoping to get into the bus but were turned away by the bodyguard wearing a suit and tie.

The venue was electric when 2 of the 3 Above & Beyond crew took the stage (Paavo was holding the fort in the UK doing their TATW podcast).

The visuals for this tour are simply amazing as we were treated to a cornucopia of geometric figures, jellyfish prancing on the screen, city scenes like New York Timesquare, and an airport scene among others. The one visual that I couldn't get out of my head was the image of skydiver with the beam coming out of his head! A&B had the ability to type a lot of messages to the crowd which was just fantastic and was used many times throughout the night. Of course the one that brought the biggest cheers was the one that said “Best show of the tour thus far”. Thanks guys, we love you too!

 

If you weren't at this show and wanted to get a sense of what the visuals were like I brought together a few Youtube clips where I thought A&B got some of their inspiration from:

 

Bjork's Oceania minus Bjork in diamonds:

 Cubesato's amazing geometric clip:

Massive Attack's Atlas Air visuals from their live tour last year:

A&B played many of their anthems including Sun & Moon, You Got to Go (I believe they played the Kyau & Albert Remix), Thing Called Love and others. The crowd including myself ate it up as we sung every word loud with lots of enthusiasm! I especially loved 'You Got to Go' because it's a very inspirational track for me personally – this is why I love A&B because they are so positive and generally have really uplifting music that can brighten anybody's day. A&B also played some newer tracks from their newly released Anjunabeats vol. 9 collection including Formula Rossa and Mozart by Mat Zo and Arty. The crowd went especially nuts for Mozart which is making me want to book a trip to Toronto to check out Mat Zo along with Gabriel and Dresden at the Guvernment on Feb 11th.

The first hour and a half had a pretty steady tempo of anthems and lesser known tracks but things clearly ramped up in the last half hour of their set when they started playing banger after banger of higher intensity tracks which really tore up the dance floor with massive positive reaction.

Overall it was a really nice set by A&B as I believe it fulfilled most of the expectations from the crowd. When they played their final track of the night the duo were nice enough to thank the crowd by autographing anything from t-shirts to signs to even ticket stubs. Jono Grant even stayed after the lights went up for a solid 15 minutes to continue signing anything and everything (look at the video link below of him signing a shoe lol).

 

 

Above & Beyond are well known to be a really fan friendly DJ trio and tonight proved to be no exception as Ottawa was treated to an amazing night of trance music. Thank you DNA Presents for bringing in one of my favourite DJ acts and hope you guys bring even more trance acts in the future!

Short Writeup on my Experience at Bal en Blanc

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I'm still in recovery mode after experiencing a very fun night at the 18th edition of Bal en Blanc in Montreal. The lineup was absolutely stacked and I was beyond excited to see how the night was going to unfold. I was not disappointed as the atmosphere was amazing while some DJs put together some fantastic sets.

Here are some of my thoughts:

Arty: Felt like his set was like listening to the Beatport top 100 track list from 2 months ago. It didn't feel like he gave us anything original and even when he did play a few bangers he cut it short too quickly to mix in a new track which killed my vibe.

About an hour ago Arty said this on his twitter: "Finally at home after probably hardest week in my life. Good things happend and really not so happend also. Just happy that we passed on." and "Thank you everyone for your support, feeling much better right now. Fully recovering next 3 days."

Apparently Arty was a no-show for his Toronto Guvernment appearance last thursday so he was probably really struggling to get through his set on Sunday with whatever is ailing him at the moment (edit: it's acute bronchitis).

Beat Service: A very good opening set from the trance room. It was more on the melodic side and I really enjoyed it.

Jochen Miller: The best 10 minute opening of the night, very high energy, Jochen was jumping around and so was I as his energy was infecting the crowd in a very good way.

Armin Van Buuren: The man, the myth, the legend. Coming off from his very successful ASOT 550 world tour Armin must be feeling like he's on cloud 9 right now. I came to Bal en Blanc being a very big fan of his because of the recent sets he delivered in ASOT 550 LA and ASOT 550 Miami where he rocked the crowd with relentless harder trance beats.

I had a lot of fun watching Armin from the front row but had hoped that he would have ditched some of his slower vocal trance tracks for a dirtier and darker vibe that I know he's perfectly capable of delivering if he wanted to. To be fair he did give us a few of those types of tracks but I wanted more, way more.

Fedde Le Grand: I briefly checked out his set a few times throughout the night and was really impressed. I don't know all of the house anthems out there so many of his tracks were sounding fresh to my ears and had a good time.

Markus Schulz: Stole the show and was the highlight of the night for me. This guy knows how to work a big room like the Palais des Congres and he gave me exactly what I was hoping to see from Armin which was deliver a darker yet high energy set that got me moving. Markus is a master of his craft and it was really an honour to see him live for the first time.

Unfortunately I had to end my night earlier than I would have liked as my girlfriend literally couldn't keep her eyes open at around 6:30 am so I had to be the good guy here and leave before I could see Ferry Corsten, Danny Tenaglia, and Ben Gold.

Having to leave Markus Schulz before he was done was a painful thing to do but admitedly I was tired as well and didn't mind the idea of crashing in my hotel room for some much needed sleep.

Fortunately I will be able to see him sooner rather than later as Stereo Nightclub announced that Markus Schulz will be coming back to Montreal to deliver a sure to be epic 6 hour set on June 15th! This is an event that I will NOT miss and you shouldn't either.

One thing that I'd like to state, and this is important: the bathroom situation for women needs to change for the better next year, full stop. My girlfriend and I bought a regular ticket and was astonished to see only two bathrooms with two toilets each for women in the entire venue! For an event that probably had close to 15,000 to 20,000 attendees having only 4 toilets total for women for regular ticket holders is a real shame. The bathrooms were great for guys as we had 3 urinals plus 2 toilets and I never had to wait longer than 5 minutes to go but for women the wait could have been up to 30-45 minutes based on the lineups. Adding a few temporary toilets could have saved us all a lot of hassle.

P.S. If you want a good laugh go check out some of the discussion of the event in the Bal en Blanc review thread at the Tranceaddict.com forum. I will state on record that I completely agree what was said about Nadia Ali's performance.