Well this is one event review I never thought i'd be writing, but its happened... I ended up driving to Alexandra Palace after figuring out the location was miles from the centre of London - which meant that getting a train was going to be a difficult mission. That left me sober for this event...
Before the event I wasn't sure what to expect, I certainly wasn't expecting to see a figure of 10,000 people expected to attend the event, I had never been to Alexandra Palace so didn't know how large it was. That left the mind boggling at the amounts of money being thrown about for these guys. We arrived at 8.30 for a 9pm start and it was clear that this was not a normal club night set up - the queue already at that time was LARGE, this was more like a gig/concert. So far all I had seen was a late teen - mid 20s audience, most girls with very high heels on and blonde hair, and the guys with arms the size of my legs...
After a drink at the bar at the entrance we joined the queue which I have to give to AP, was extremely efficient, they were backing people up into 4 lines then releasing one whole line at a time, with 10 people processing the tickets it was extremely smooth and impressive. We went from at the back of a queue to inside the venue in 15 mins max. Walking into the atrium gave a sense of scale to the place - HUGE, the main entrance was beyond that with large temporary bars set up, merchandising and food. It was like a mini indoor festival...
We acquired a few drinks and went through to the main hall, the DJs were on the left handside and the cavernous room just opened up in front of us. It was an extremely impressive venue to hold something like this in, with an extremely high ceiling and plenty of room to curtain off parts of the room off for the toilets, extra bars etc. The opening DJs, who I think were Third Party, were setting the tempo off at aproximately 1000mph, banging the tracks out at 9.30pm, it felt odd but people were going for it. I had to remind myself I wasn't in Fabric. Heres where it gets interesting - it wasn't actually that bad, didn't really know many of the tracks except for a version of Dennis Ferrer's Hey Hey, it didn't sound too disimilar from what I've heard in room 2 of Fabric previously (I know, I was surprised too). This gave me a chance to listen to the sound system and I was very surprised, it was definitely loud enough and even standing right at the back of the room it was a decent volume and could still feel the bass, I would guess that the sound people have had a lot of experience!
The room began to fill up more and more and it was time to test out the facilities - ie toilets, the guys' weren't that bad, portaloos brought in on trailers, but the girls' produced huge queues across the back of the room. Thank god I am not one of them!
Alex Metric came on approximately 10.30 odd and started a mainly electro based set that wasn't interesting at all but everyone else seemed to enjoy it... Then it was time for the main event. We actually missed their appearance but I am guessing from the huge white sheet behind the warm up guys that it dropped to reveal 'them'. They were standing in line on top of a elevated platform that was covered in LEDs with large screens either side making pretty patterns. The cameras also came on and the pictures were sent to large screens displaying happy people's faces...
And the music? Meh... It had energy and their main tracks that had been in the charts - 'One' and the other one I don't know the name of sounded great in there I will admit. But I didn't hear any other real stand out ones. They didn't play the vocal of One thank god. What I found disappointing was two things -
1) Nothing they played was really 'house' it was more like a electro trance genre.
2) They kept on interspersing their tracks with pop hooks - ie from Coldplay 'Clocks', Adele, etc etc...
This kind of indicated to me that their own material was not strong enough to form a set on itself...
We left at around 1.30 to avoid the crush to get out that was no doubt going to happen. One of the things that stuck out to me the whole night was how much everyone seemed to enjoy it - it was clear that although there were a lot of 'good looking' people there, they were there for the music... This is something that has been missing from my trips to more credible nights...
Overall a good experience, and a great one off for the girlfriend!
Venue - 9/10 A great place for a concert, shame about the location compared to central London...
Music - 6/10 (for me) 10/10 (for my gf)
Crowd - 8/10 Everyone up for it, yes I can claim their taste is rubbish, but that would be my opinion...
Music was a 8/10 for me, particularly the second hour but the crowd was very mixed - I got the impression that a lot of people were there for the sake of being there. Biggest disappointment was how short their set was - to sum it up, it was a really good night out for me but I couldn't compare it to how good they were in Ibiza!
ReplyDeleteGlad you enjoyed :-)
ReplyDeleteFrom our area it seemed like everyone was dancing away... Did you go to the afterparty?
I don't think people are ever more impressed when seeing people the first time!