Gatecrasher Summer Sound System Review

[highbpm]

Eric,

Really glad that my lot treated you well and that you enjoyed the GC experience!

You will probably understand why I miss home a lot now that I am over here!

Great news that you liked Turnmills. The Gallery was a regular event for me - love the crowd and the guest DJ line up is always superb. Yep, PVD gets a little crazy - I'm looking forward to his set at Twilo on the 21st - will you be there?

Wish I could have been at the GCSS event - it's not far from where I live and all of my friends were there the lucky bastards.

So, are you an NY native? Any tips for the best places to go for me to get my 'fix' of Euro trance?

Greg

[glide]

I never miss PVD at Twilo. His 6+ hour sets are the only way to truly experience his music. And every single time I have seen him there it has been better than the last.

For trance i pretty much only go to twilo. When I go out to hear good music, Twilo is the place to go. There are some annoying aspects to the club but they def. bring in the best djs. When Oakey is in town though, he never plays at twilo. He had a falling out w/ them a few years ago. He's gonna be in town on July 13th (week b/f PVD) at the Roseland. Never been there for a clubbing event, only for concerts-it's pretty cool. Once in a while the Roxy is good.

eric

[glide]

Just got back from a two week trip to Europe. I managed to get in a good deal of clubbing while I was there, with the highlights definitely being PVD at the Gallery on Fri. the 16th and the Gatecrasher Summer Sound System on the 17th.

If you are ever in London and you get a chance, make sure you go to Turnmills (or the Gallery as the party is called on Fri.) It's a pretty small club (they only let in 750 people) but inside there's lots of room and there must be like 12 different rooms to hang out in. Really cool club-but tough door which made for a good crowd. Couple that w/ Tall Paul and PVD and you have an amazing night out.

Tall paul was ok-i don't really like his cheesy style and I think his mixing sucks ass, but van dyk was unreal. He played from 2 until 5:30 and was in the zone beginning to end.

I was really surprised to see how differently he behaves in europe as opposed to his sets at Twilo. In Twilo he's usually pretty calm and just kind of stands in place in the booth and does his thing (w/ the exception of the last time i saw him in may), but in europe, he really gets the crowd going, dancing in the booth and really getting into it.

The setup of this club was pretty cool too, with an elevated dj box that was totally sealed off but there was a window right next to him so you could go up and knock and he'd acknowledge you. I brought a Twilo sticker w/ me and when he saw it, he opened the door and signed it for me, w/o me even asking him.

Plus the brits are all really cool. Very friendly. So Turnmills was awesome. I caught maybe 2 hours of sleep and then off to gatecrasher.

Gatecrasher was held at Turweston Airfield, in the middle of no where, about an hour train ride north of london. The festival started at 2pm on sat. and went till 6am on sun. They had five different indoor arenas and an outdoor soundstage sponsored by radio 1 where they broadcast the whole show live across the UK. The weather on sat. was amazing-sunny and 70 (not what you'd expect in england) which made the day so enjoyable. They had a whole carnival set up w/ rides and everything. All in all, gatecrasher really did a fantastic job w/ everything.

Most of the top DJs (or at least the ones i wanted to see) were in the main Gatecrasher tent which was also filmed for MTV. It started off w/ Matt Hardwick who I missed, then Guy Orandel who was great. He really got the crowd going. What was nice was that you could either go in the arena and dance or you could just hang out in the warm sun and hear the music perfectly...so that's what we did for a while.

After Orandel was Scott Bond. I think this guy is fantastic. I loved him at GC2000 and he was in my opinion prob. played the best set of anyone the whole time this day too. The highlight was the Sara McLlocklin (sp?) tune that is on S&D's NEIII import. I don't know the name but it was great. Unfortunately the DJs didn't really listen to each other's sets b/c we heard it 2 more times in the same tent later that night.

After Bond came John Kelly who also put on a great show. He really gets into it, dancing around and just feeding off the crowd. This is when things really started getting going-around 6pm or so.

Kelly was followed by Judge jules who I personally hate. I think he's a fag and his sets are way too mainstream but he wasn't bad. I kind of used this time to rest a little b/c I knew I had a long night ahead of me.

Following Jules was PVD who was actually a little disappointing. I say this only b/c just about every song he played, he had played the night b/f at the GAllery. So I just felt like I was hearing the same stuff. But it still sounded really good. During PVD's set they kept giving updates on the Euro 2000 game b/t England and Germany and when England took a 1-0 lead, the place went crazy. They actually broadcast the whole game on this huge video screen outside.

Van Dyk was followed by Oakey who played a really solid 1 1/2 hr set (all the DJs were basically alloted 1.5 in the main arena). He sounded like the old Oakey, not the one who played at the Roxy in March, which made me happy.

Oakey was followed by Pete Tong. I had never seen Tong and thought he was so so. I think he's much more of a house dj and he tries too hard at gatecrasher to spin trance which is what most people wanted to hear.

After a half hour or so, I decided to leave to head over to the progressive arena to see Dave Seaman, Sander Kleinenberg and then a 3 1/2 hour S&D set, Twilo style. Unfortunately, and this is my one complaint for the day, they fucked up the schedules that they handed out to everyone and also the map showing where all the arenas were. So we went to the wrong arena and i'm waiting for dave seaman to come out and finally i asked someone which arena it was to find out i was in the wrong place. Then we're walking all over the place to find the right one, b/c the map is totally wrong (i think 2 of the 5 arenas were in the right place) and the security people have no idea what's what. By the time i found the right arena i walked in to hear the end of Kleinenberg's set. Apparently everythng got shifted up an hour or so so I totally missed Seaman and missed most of Kleinenberg which pissed me off.

But I got over it, b/c 10 minutes later, Digweed came out and started spinning while sasha was finishing up a set in the main arena. He was later joined by sasha and they kept switching just like they do here. Apparently this was a big treat for the Brits b/c they rarely play together. The two of them were having the best time, smiling, dancing, and joking around on stage. They went until 6 when the thing ended. In the middle I decided to check out deep dish which was playing in the bed arena. They were really solid, but I only stayed for a little bit b/c i wanted to get back to to hear the end of S&D.

Man did that day go quickly. I think I sat for a total of an hour. Gatecrasher did such a great job. The effects in the diff. arenas w/ video screens, lasers, great lights etc. were awesome. They even had these huge lasers outside the main arena that were pointed all over the place and looked incredible late at night.

Getting home was a bit of a nightmare, as traffic was a bitch and the shuttle bus which was supposed to take us to the train station was impossible to find, but eventually we made it back.

eric

[Nolimit]

Im surprised you didn't check out HOME or Fabric while you were in London.

[Pershoot]

Wish I could've been there. Next time you go..check out bedrock..by villiers square...the place is small...but digweed always does an amazing job when he plays (digweed's club).

[johnb]

Glide,

I totally agree. Pete Tong and Judge Jules are the cheesy idiots of the UK scene. Just play the cheesiest versions of whatever is popular at the time, and play all the hits you hear on cheesy Ibiza compilations. Hell, they make a lot of those compilations. But I guess they make tons of money, so they probably don't sweat it too much.

JohnB

[back2basics]

Dont like Home that much, i went to the opening party and it was crap. But i hear it's picking up now. Glide your right though the turnmills is a great venue.

But the big news is Carl cox has taken a residency at Renaissance.

You lot should travel a little further north when you go across get down to cream and basics

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I want to go out blazing not fade away.