The anticipation for Adventure Club was high in Ottawa for their sold out show at Barrymore's. Having made a big impact in the US Festival scene this summer Adventure Club's popularity has grown substantially in North America including in Ottawa as they sold out Barrymore's, which is a much larger venue than their regular spot at the underground Ritual nightclub. The demand for Adventure Club was so great this time around that the promoters even organized a second show the night before on a Monday.
Having arrived only a few minutes before Adventure Club took the stage I was immediately impressed with the fast ticket processing outside the venue. The promoters were checking in online ticket buyers with iPads in the line which really sped things up. It only took a little over 10 minutes to process a line that was 30-40 deep outside. What ultimately turned out to be the major bottleneck was the coat check but at least we were warm inside and could still listen to the music from openers (Rainman, JC Boom) at the back.
The amount of buzz for Adventure Club was unbelievable. The first few minutes of the set was literally drowned out by the excitement from the crowd which meant that you could barely tell what was even played at all. But that didn't stop the dance floor because as soon as the first dubstep drop hit the speakers almost everyone was jumping up and down with their fist in the air. The first hour of the set was a good interplay between Dubstep and Trap music but overall I found it all a little too chaotic. The combination of the crowd noise hurt the sound quality and the overly enthusiastic mic interruptions left the musical flow of the first half of the set a little disjointed.
Thankfully the second hour made up for it as the crowd noise lessened and mic interruptions were kept at a minimum. The track selection also helped as some of the music played in the second half received the biggest crowd reactions of the night. First off it's important to note that a lot of the people attending were well acquainted with Adventure Club's tracks such as 'Foxes' (played in the first hour) and 'Flight Facilities' became a massive communal sing along among the the true fans. The biggest non-AC track played was Zedd and Lucky Date's 'Fall Into The Sky' Ft. Ellie Goulding which comes as no surprise as it features one of the most unique drops I've heard in the past 6 months. Other notable tracks played were cuts from Dada Life's 'Kick Out The Epic MotherF**ker' and Major Lazer's 'Jah No Partial' which were both individually mashed up with different electro/dubstep drops to mix things up. But my favourite part of the show was also my biggest surprise as Adventure Club carefully mixed in a few Gesaffelstein tracks into the set. He sampled 'Control Movement' and 'Viol' for only a few short moments each individual time but to use them at all in this type of event was a welcome surprise.
Overall Adventure Club delivered what the crowd asked for which was a cornucopia of the hottest in dubstep and trap music mixed in with their signature melodic styled tracks. The whole crowd treated the event more like a rock concert rather than a dance event as the DJ commanded centre attention. Is that a bad thing? I'm not quite sure but what I do know is that the DJ is the new rock star and the DJ booth is the new rock stage.
