EVENT REVIEW: Bizzare Contact / Royal Flush @ Li’ly Lounge 25-04-15

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Once again, Progressive Monkey comes away with majestic flying colors as the Toronto psy-family came out in numbers at Li’ly Lounge last weekend to witness the musical energy that was provided by Didy Ezra of Bizzare Contact and Royal Flush fame, along with foot-stomping sets from the local heroes Sara Dopstar, MagicMushroom and Lumen.

The event kicked off as scheduled at 10PM as MagicMushroom started to warm up the decks with his pumped up psychedelic grooves. He kicked off the night with progressive psytrance and quickly switched gears to goa-psytrance by 10:30PM as the crowd started to come in. The dance floor started to fill up as things were kickin’ in and getting started. As he entered the climax of his set, the BPM was raised to 145 with some full-on sounds which called out the part of the crowd that was still at the sidelines.

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As always, Prog Monkey had moved a step in the right direction with the decor set up; which constitutes as a major factor at any psy-trance event. Along with the usual suspects Space Tribe‘s psychedelic art to trip on, there was some origami hanging on top of the mixing decks which looked pretty cool. There were a couple of strobe lights in the set-up that did not belong, unless one wanted to invite seizures from inebriated dancers. In the second half of the event sense prevailed, and the strobe lights were turned off, which meant I could actually face in a direction I couldn’t and wouldn’t for the first half of the night.

Sara Dopstar started to take over the decks just before it hit midnight and was in full flow starting her set with melodic progressive psytrance. She delicately brought the crowd down to the more groovy 135 BPM foot-stomping beats. The crowd started to mingle on the dance floor. By this time, the basement of Li’ly Lounge was packed, with more psy-heads coming in. Sara has a strong local following (including yours truly), and she soon switched to goa-psytrance and those loyal psy-heads that always turn up the heat on the dance floor came through.

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Half-way through her set Sara started to switch gears and started moving towards a more bass thumping sound to keep the flow and floor ready for when Bizzare Contact would take over. In my personal experience of grooving to Sara’s sets, I feel she has blossomed into a crowd puller. Her sets make people socialize on the dance floor through smiling faces and dancing brows as their bodies sway to the beautiful psychedelic sounds.

The clock had just struck 1AM when Didy showed up behind the decks sending the crowd into a frenzy. He hadn’t even taken over the decks yet, he was just chatting up with Sara, probably about getting the right track to play so as to make a smooth transition into his set; the crowd didn’t care, they were screaming loud and never have I heard as much human generated sound in that basement of Li’ly Lounge.

Didy started with an old school morning psytrance track by himself and he kept dropping his own originals and remixes. By the end of it he had pretty much covered the whole Bizzare Contact catalog. Halfway through his set he switched to the brand new psygressive sound of Royal Flush while dabbling with full on loops remixed with the Royal Flush sound. If that wasn’t enough of a treat, at one point he slowed things down to 120BPM for couple of minutes before launching again into the 145-155BPM full on psytrance drive entering the climax of his set.

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The dance floor was so packed at this point that people were dancing at the entry to the basement of the club. The energy was one of the highest and happiest I’ve experienced based on energy per square feet of space. No one was leaving as we entered the last couple of tracks and Didy started to bid goodbye to the crowd. The crowd reacted with more vigorous dancing, as that is the only way psyheads know how to say, “Thank you for this happiness galore.” Didy, who has played from the biggest open air festivals across the world to intimate basement gigs, looked very pleased with his set and Toronto’s appreciation for his art of spreading joy through the medium of psychedelic sound.

He stepped off the stage as Lumen arrived to start hitting the final nail on what was a majestic night of music and friends coming together. Lumen has a knack of spinning a lot of live psychedelic samples in his sets which was no different this night. He started with his originals and also remixed them on the spot. Lumen likes to slip dark psytrance into a full on set just to mix things up a bit, and he did it this night with utmost precision, keeping in mind that his set had started at 3AM and was to go until closing, which was at 5AM.

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By 4AM the crowd had started to spread out a bit as some started to make their way home, leaving more space on the dance floor for the survivors of the night to jump and bounce around. There were fewer feet on the floor, yet the energy of the place hadn’t dipped an ounce as the lights came on at 4:40AM. None of the remaining people showed any signs of leaving, just is the case with many psytrance events. The lights only made the crowd dance harder as they realized that this was the last dance for the entire night. We all entered the climax of the night with 150BPM of pure goa-psy sound until 5AM, when the curtains had to be drawn on the event as the permitted time slot was past.

Check out Edu Carvalho’s photos from this event over here!

On the 23rd of May 2015, Progressive Monkey has plans to do this all over again, this time with the old-school legends of the game, 1200 Micrograms. Suffice it to say that this looks to be a great year for Progressive Monkey and psyheads in Toronto as the psy culture spreads around the GTA. It can only grow bigger and more beautiful.

Check out the 1200 Micrograms event page here.

To get your early discounted tickets for 1200 Micrograms click here.

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LINKS:

Progressive Monkey

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1200 Micrograms

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Bizzare Contact

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Royal Flush

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Sara Dopstar

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MagicMushroom

Website

Lumen (Live)

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Nikhil Khedkar – EDM TOR

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