（日本語が読める方いたら私のミクシイページを見てみてください！）
Right, time to sum up what happened last weekend, then. Apologies if this goes on for too long, but if I can’t ramble about my own event on my own blog, where can I, eh? The above photo was taken during my set (so I’m the little red blob up in the DJ booth), and while a bit blurry, it gives a good idea of the attendance for this event. Zio mentioned that there were around 70 people, which is pretty respectable for an event of this kind with no special guests. We’re expecting much much more for November’s event, when Hellraiser will be headlining, of course. Incidentally, there should be some very nice photos from this event coming soon, for reasons which maybe I can’t explain just yet. I’ll post them up as soon as they make an appearance, though.
Anyway, things got off to a slightly chaotic start pre-event when it turned out that our ‘meet at 9pm for sound checks/putting up the decor’ plan was ruined by the previous party overrunning in spectacular style. In the end, Stanfield, Minagi take-de-x and myself were kicking our heels outside Studio Cube until 10.30, which for an event starting at 11pm, is cutting it pretty fine. Cue an insane 25mins or so of putting up posters/flyers etc, while simultaneously trying to sound check all our gear. As Stanfield and I had laptops to sort out, this took longer than you might expect. In the middle of all this, poor Minagi was trying to prepare for his opening set – he did a great job of setting up in super-quick time without panicking, considering this was only his second event.
It was my first time to see Minagi play, and his selection was really good – he seems to be a great choice to get things going. Mixing hard house, hard trance, and a bit of NRG, his set was really energetic – I knew a good few of the tunes, but I can’t recall the names….they were the sort of tracks I don’t have myself, but hear a lot in the bigger events/mixes. He also brought along some extremely enthusiastic guests, dancing away like lunatics from the word go, and that helped the atmosphere a huge amount.
Next up was take-de-x, playing the psychedelic style that he’s going to perform next month at Enough vs Hell’s Gate. He warned me beforehand that the bpm would be very slow, but he built things up nicely, going into semi-hard house/NRG by the end. His transitions/track selection were very pro indeed, and I was really impressed. Aside from his set, take also gave me a huge amount of help while preparing before the event, so thanks a million to him for that.
Zio followed take-de-x with another hard style set, which to tell the truth I couldn’t follow incredibly well, as my mind was understandably elsewhere. He played a few of the anthems that I’ve heard in his previous hard style sets, but this time the crowd were a little slow to get going. As far as I can tell there aren’t too many DJs in Tokyo pushing the hard style sound, and so perhaps the Hell’s crowd (a mix of hard house/NRG/gabber fans) aren’t too familiar with the style itself. There’s no doubting that mixing-wise Zio knows exactly what he’s doing though, and given time it might grow in popularity a little more.
As PlasmaDancer was making his debut, I was really keen to…. wait a minute, that’s me, isn’t it?
It is indeed (there goes my anonymity with the above photo), and in short my set went far far better than I could have dreamed of – before saying anything else I should thank all of the dancers/glowstickers who made the set look absolutely awesome, and also the people who came just to hear my set. Massive thanks to Cogi and Guld for coming and giving me support – both of them appeared around 2am and then went back home soon afterwards, and it really was fantastic to have them there. Special thanks also to Mai, as well as Miho, David and Takuya (who stayed for my set and then went off to work at 6am!). Final set-related thanks should go to Cyrez (I absolutely owe you one this time), DJ Rx, Guld and Betwixt & Between. Thanks also to VX Pasta for the supplying the no-doubt great visuals.
I was thinking about posting up a re-recording of my set this week, but to tell the truth it might be nice to keep the first tune as a 100% ‘Hell’s Gate exclusive’ for the time being – maybe I can replace it with something before too long in a slightly different mix. It might be useful to give you my tracklist before rambling about how it all went, though:
- Epyx & Cyrez vs Fea – Untitled (Cyrez Hell’s Gate edit)
- Carbon Based & DJ Rx – Titor’s Quantum Theory
- Aaron – Celestea (2008 version)
- Alek Szahala – Alanamra
- Full Circle DJs – Halcyon
- Alek Szahala – Unholy Word
- Guld – Solid State Scouter
- Nightforce feat. Twisted Freq – Estrogen
- Alabaster – Void
- Betwixt & Between – Disturbed Mind
- Betwixt & Between – The Moon From Below
- Alek Szahala – Iron Squid
- Epyx & Cyrez – Polyhedra 08
Anyway, things got going with the ‘exclusive’ edit of Epyx & Cyrez/Fea’s as-yet-untitled new tune…..and I can honestly say that it absolutely devastated the place. Without a word of a lie, I have only seen Alek Szahala’s best tracks get that kind of a reaction from a Studio Cube crowd, and it set up the rest of the mix brilliantly. As I haven’t actually been going to Hell’s Gate as a punter for that long, I wasn’t too sure what kind of tracks would get people going – I knew that there is a big hard trance group, but also that gabber gets a lot of play time there too. So….the idea for my set was to get people moving with some very danceable/melodic tunes for the first 15-20 mins, then go a bit more twisted, before a really-hard-but-melodic finish to drag people out of the darkness. I couldn’t quite believe how well that worked, and although I thought that I had tired everyone out by the time I played Halcyon, things got going again once the more recognisable tunes came in.
[above] Me playing Carbon Based & DJ Rx – Titor’s Quantum Theory (while setting up/mixing in Celestea)
Zio and I have been having a bit of a chat about the set, and both agree that the Hell’s edit, Alanamra, Iron Squid and Polyhedra were the biggest crowd-pleasers, but the whole thing went off really well. I was keen to use Estrogen too, but I was worried that the breakbeats would kill the pace I’d built up in the first half of the set. As a way around it, I played Alabaster’s Void over the top, which has quite a long section with only the kick, handily. Funnily enough, I tried to build things up as crazy as possible towards the end with The Moon From Below-Iron Squid-Polyhedra, to set things up for Stanfield’s gabber, but his set was a lot slower than the 175bpm I finished on (starting on 165, he eventually built his own set up 180bpm, mind).
All in all, then, I couldn’t have hoped for more – and now I have some great pointers from Zio on which direction might be best to take the next set at the 1st Anniversary event.
While I collapsed in a heap, Stanfield stepped up to play his gothic/cult-tinged gabber, and really went all out for power. There were a good few people making it to the event only to hear him play, including some of the best gabber DJs in Tokyo (including Miho herself and DJ Lunch). I’m not so familiar with a lot of the tracks (although as usual I picked up on a few anthems), but I really enjoyed the hardcore Jungle-style interludes that came with a lot of the tunes played, very nice. The only slight downer I suppose is that as our styles are very different, a few of the NRGetic Romancer-style ravers who had been up the front for my set ran away for a bit, while the hardcore gabber fans who had been sitting out my stuff woke up again for Stanfield. It would be great to have the whole crowd as one, but there are a few too many different groups, perhaps. Anyway, great stuff from Stanfield, and his first time mixing via laptop went without any problems whatsoever, thankfully.
Finally, Zio stepped up for a Hard NRG set that was really top class. Continuing the Epyx & Cyrez theme, he played a huge number of their older tracks, including one of my absolute favourites, Subida del Muerto, actually mixing it into their remix of Code of Silence. He also managed to fit in Lab 4’s Falling Down (of course), while his intro track was also brilliant…I didn’t recognise it, so maybe I’ll check about that one.
[above] Zio plays DJ Rx – Code of Silence (Epyx & Cyrez remix)
As it hit 5am all too quickly, Zio stopped to announce that Hellraiser will be coming in November (although strangely a good few people had already disappeared by then), and then the party came to an end. At least for the punters – we had a meeting after clearing up our gear, the main topic of which was the ordering of the sets – ie. building up the bpm gradually, or having a ‘peak and trough’ style so that folk can have a rest if it’s a set they’re not into. I’m not sure which I prefer, and nothing’s really been decided yet.
Phew. That was a long report, eh? I thought it might be interesting for people outside Japan to have a more detailed ‘insider’s’ impression about what goes on this time, though. Anyway, next event for me is the 29th November, so plenty of time to recover/think about the next set.