Trance Energy 2011 (review-ish)

the main stage "PLAY" at Trance Energy 2011 (now dubbed "Energy: the Network")

photos by jon michael, 19-20.02.11.

AWESOME rave. I was at the venue for 9 hours, just one hour less than the official event duration. The Dutch know how to party. All the DJs I saw were solid. Super SICK light show in the main room. Tiësto's 3h set destroyed the dancefloor, and Sander van Doorn continued it off well and closed the night with "Synesthesia" (by the Thrillseekers), a perfect ending.

Here's my more complete account/review-ish of the night/weekend, with links to videos.

ASOBI SEKSU acoustic!

Went to see Asobi Seksu play an acoustic show at the Loft.

Really good. And they sound really different acoustic. At times, if it weren't for the vocals, I wouldn't have been able to recognize the song. (Check out their first album: self-titled, and their sophomore album: Citrus [2006], as well as their newer stuff! asobi seksu on myspace)

The opening band was Lady Danville, 3 guys from Danville, Ca, UCLA grads. Checked out their myspace page before going to the show, read that two of them met at a vocal/choir audition, so was not surprised that they had good singing voices. But their songs were about relationships, "I want you back"— not my type of music. But they were pretty good nonetheless. Here are a couple pics of asobi seksu. (I was in the front row! Yay for small venues/"intimate" shows and nice guys who when turning around and seeing someone short offer to trade places!)

front woman yuki chikudate. she signed her name in japanese on my ticket! :)

setlist

DVC ftw!!!

We hella killed it at Let's Bounce!

Not even (or about) two hours in, fire alarm wtf?! Most likely some wacked-out dude pulled it. Everyone had to evac. Some people were confused, but then already wristbanded people were allowed to go to the outside stage, which became PACKED. Price Center Plaza looked amazing. Too bad the thought didn't strike my mind to go above the PC Theater (2nd floor) to take a hella good picture instead of a very mediocre pic from the water walkway which insuffiently captures the energy at that moment.

Then after the fire alarm finally got cleared and people were being allowed in again, the inside rooms got pretty filled up, also because a bunch of people outside ran off to the inside rooms, too. Overall, Bounce 2010 was a success. The crowd seemed pretty calm about the fire alarm and stayed in line. Didn't hear of anyone puking or undercovers. Or at least not yet. (Staff meeting tomorrow!) EVERYONE tore up great sets! (Even though I didn't catch everyone's set, I'm pretty sure of this.)

Strange crowd movement, though, between the inside rooms. First the smaller one (stage two//PURE) got packed while the larger one (stage three//ORIGINAL) was mostly empty. Then I think during Donnie's and Emily's sets it was packed in both. Sometime around 11 or 12 the smaller room thinned out. So when I went up on stage there weren't many people.. not what I expected.. but still fun, played my banging trance set. My friend Sanh (DJ Sanhic) helped me out. Very grateful! (and I do prefer to tag team for a first performance.) Because, turned out it was a day when I couldn't fucking beatmatch. (Yes this is a problem for DJing —you can't fucking be a dj if you can't even beatmatch!— sometimes I'll be able to mix/beatmatch a whole hour or two pretty well except for a couple songs, other times it's the opposite: only a couple songs perfectly beatmatched.) Maybe it's the loud monitors/speakers. Ehh. Just gotta practice more. He mixed in a couple tracks right after the first breakdown, so I ended up having time for one more song and dropped Marco V's "When the Night Falls". Was fun.

I just updated the "media" section of the DVC website, so check that out. Pro (DSLR) photos in a few days. So far two sets of amateur photos are up, including mine (pics are out of chronological order, though. :/ ).

Deadmau5 @HouseofBlues

Deadmau5 at House of Blues in Downtown San Diego last night (Sunday) was so good! Wayy better than at etd.pop in May and also better than at the sfLovefest Afterparty 4 weeks ago (actually I don't think I was even there for his whole set at lovefest; think I went to the other room).

The House of Blues is such a nice venue! I would so go there again! (And they were selling tickets for the Bravery [tmr/Monday night, but I have a midterm on Tues.] and Julian Plenti only $10! But the Julian Plenti show is 21+. =[ )

The lighting system there is amazing, for this mid-size venue. Computerized, I can tell; it's so tight, like 10(??) rows of multi-colored lights. ++++deadmau5's own visuals! Great show. Just the light show in itself was great. Haha. Serious, you don't even have to be on anything to get absorbed in the light show.

They wouldn't allow in cameras and made me check mine in (fee: $3). lameeee. But I guess the security man at the door was laxer than the security woman–inside I saw guys taking pics and video on their cameras. xT Link to a pretty good video below.

I was standing in the center right, on the bar floor– 3 steps higher than general floor –so I got a decent view. Got to see the mau5 push buttons and twist knobs the whole time. Everyone cheered whenever he took his mau5head off and when he put it on. Ahah. Some kids also gave/flung kandi to/at the mau5. And he wore it and showed us. What a chill dude.

youtube HD videos: Deadmau5 - Strobe (lovely intro!)

More Ghosts N Whatever/Ghosts N Stuff

You Need a Ladder (Zelda theme)/Bass Phenomenon. @House of Blues, San Diego, nov.1.

Heard that Deadmau5 made a special guest appearance at Hard Haunted Mansion Saturday night in LA. (His name was only on the Friday line-up.) Tight.

★★★★★

Armin @ monstermassive2009

arminvanbuuren

OMG! Even though they only allowed me to play 2 hours it was #monsterMASSIVE!!! 35.000 people!! Gotta love L.A.!

about 11 hours ago from Echofon

On my way to the L.A. Sportsarena for#monstermassive! 3 hour set, one hour extra due to daylight saving time!about 16 hours ago from web

---

Aaaah if he played an extra hour it would have totally made my night!!! European-style: 3hr+ long sets. Aaah oh well, guess I'll just have to wait til I go to Europe to go to those super long parties where headliner DJs spin for 4 hours straight.

Nonetheless, Monster Massive was pretty good. My first MM. Before they've always had the main stage inside the Sports Arena, but then because this year they got AvB to headline (only meine lieblingsDJ and the #1 DJ in the world!!), it would be way too packed and overheated in there, so they moved it to this parking lot outside, and as you can see from Armin's twitpic, HELLA packed. Cool set-up though, in the parking lot. 8 of these cube/boxes with projection screens, lights, fire, and speakers. Way to rock it.

Going to try to not write such a lengthy review of MM—I need to try to get some reading done before heading out to see Deadmau5 in downtown in a couple hours (! Fall quarter is so busy! events-wise). So, it was quite good. The LINE into the place was ridiculous. RIDICULOUS. I'll post pics later. The electro stage inside the sports arena might have been ok, checked out Pete Tong for a bit, didn't like his music.

John O'Callaghan: He played a lot of harder trance/really bassy songs, with a few of his own tracks sandwiched in. Think I liked his set at the Lovefest Afterparty 4 weeks ago better.

Armin: =) the more well-known tracks that I can remember that he played: Home (by PvD), Symfo (Rank1), Falling in and out of love (AvB), a couple of other vocal trance tracks that I think I sang along to, and he ended with John O'Callaghan's "Find Yourself", which John O'Callaghan himself already played in his set earlier, though I think Armin played a different remix. =\ I don't like it when the same tracks get played more than once in a night. That shouldn't happen. Well, Armin definitely planned to play Find Yourself as part of his set, but..he knew JOC was playing at MM, too, and it's his own track.. :| I dunno. At the Lovefest Afterpary 2008, ATB played a remix of Nirvana's "Smells Like Teen Spirit", then later Armin played a different remix. o__O;; Shouldn't he have backup songs planned in his set in case another DJ's already played it? Hmm..

Alright that's enough blogging for today. More photo-entries to come. :)

Strength, DEELAY CEELAY, and STARFUCKER @theLOFT

Went to my first show this quarter at the Loft. Great show.

Strength, from Portland, Oregon

They were good. I out-of-habitly felt a dislike toward them (opening bands), but then, yeah, they were pretty good. Fun. Prejudice gone.

Genre: nu-disco/indie-dance.

Next band: DEELAY CEELAY. also from Portland. myspace.

Excellent! ★★★★★

If you like: air (french duo), boards of canada, kyte, postal service, liquid drum'n'bass, trance, idm.

Two guys, both on the drums. The rest of the sounds they recorded beforehand, I believe. I was on the front right (yes good thing I brought my earplugs) next to this guy video-recording who happened to be one of the band members' brother. He told me "Deelay Ceelay" came from their names: Delanay, and Chris Lael. Sorry not so great pictures.

They had their own visuals playing, too. So win. One of the guys is a visual artist, the other a percussionist. Makes for a spell-binding show. They had strobe lights set-up under their drum sets, and then the psychedelic visuals. Watch video of a live show in Seattle.

Download their album (4 tracks) for free on their website or just click here.

Finally, Starfucker. Ok, looks like they're all from Portland.

Genre: indie-electro, synth-pop

I seriously didn't know that they were quite well-known (relatively/indie scene-wise). The Loft was pretty packed, definitely more than what I expected. I got their album "Jupiter" a few months ago, liked it, and so when I saw they were coming to the Loft, made a note on my calendar to go. Didn't look them up or anything. Well, they played a few songs that weren't on Jupiter and that a lot of kids knew, so I figured that wasn't their debut album. They played a good show. But it was a little annoying that they kept pausing to change monitor volumes, pick up a dropped drumstick, change mic volumes. Still alright. They ended with "Girls Just Wanna Have Fun".

Oh, and they're changing their name. You can e-mail them suggestions. There's a band from Belgium of the same name. Guy in crowd: "Planetfucker!" Maybe not..

Olympus EP-1 Pen

Instant Love, Followed by Letdown, by David Pogue, NYtimes>stateoftheart

This has got to be the best (★★★★★) gadget review I've read so far.

---

Phil27 (ethics & morality) final today, then 8am Math20c final tomorrow (saturday!). Fun.

Then in the evening will finally fly back home for a summer in Berkeley. =]

Telekinesis, Ra Ra Riot

The show at the Loft Sunday night was pretty good.

Telekinesis (Seattle, WA) opened. They were alright, nice guys. At the back merch table I told the lead singer guy, Michael Benjamin Lerner, (2nd from the left) that I hadn't heard of them before, but that I enjoyed their show. I might have bought their CD if I had more cash on me, because the packaging was nice. =) haha great reason. But this lead singer guy didn't play the guitar, he was the drummer. So the drumset was set at the front of the stage, and he apoligized for causing us permanent hearing damage.

The next band was Cut Off Your Hands (New Zealand). I did not like them. Just not my taste in music. Indie-pop/punk, kind of punk-rock-ish with fast drums, their hair styles, and too much 'oh oh oh..' in vocals. They did put on a good show, though, I stepped out right before their second to last song because I couldn't take any more. Other people were quite enjoying them, nevertheless.

Ra Ra Riot was good. But the first few songs, I wasn't feeling it yet. Sounded a bit of a mess live, I thought they sounded better recorded. Drums were loud, everything was just kinda too loud. But later when they got to their better songs, they sounded better. Uh huh, yeah.. Will be seeing them again when they open for Death Cab for Cutie at Rimac. I guess I just wasn't very impressed. Maybe it's just me because I wasn't in too good a mood that day or having to had endure Cut Off Your Hands.