Initially, this event was billed as Astrix featuring an unannounced special guest at Maison Mercer, but after a necessary venue change, the special guest was now a few talented local DJs. Electric Escape went full speed ahead and delivered yet another solid U4RIA event at Nest.
I wasn’t able to attend the first bit of the show, but the opening DJs were HNRSound who recently won a spot to play at True North Music Festival. From what I heard, HNR played a beautiful progressive and trance set filled with tracks like Luminary – Amsterdam (Smith & Pledger update) and songs from Oceanlab, Above and Beyond and more. By all accounts, it was a solid opening act for a trance party.
I managed to get to the venue just after 12AM, catching the latter half of Deecee‘s first set. The crowd was dancing up a storm as he dished out a variety of sounds, including a few classic anthems. I did notice that the sound seemed to be leveled on the high end, making the treble stand out. The effect diminished toward the back of the room and seemed to improve as the night progressed. Deecee’s set didn’t seem to intrude upon the mood that our headliner was going to bring, but instead it managed to get the crowd primed and ready to dance.
Astrix finally took to the decks, and from the start he absolutely slayed it. Most people were lost in the dance: stomping, shuffling, liquid, hooping, gloving – everyone was able to move to the music. The tone was a driving Israeli full-on most of the way through, but leaned toward the darker side of the genre near the end. I personally was ecstatic to hear Astrix’s mashup of Shpongle‘s Divine Moments of Truth and Hallucinogen‘s Jiggle of the Sphinx, which is part of a larger mashup called The Old Monsters. It’s music like this that grabs people by the soul and demands that they dance, tolerating no argument.
Naturally Astrix also played a number of his own hits, including the ever popular Deep Jungle Walk. While I thoroughly enjoyed this set it bears mentioning that I’ve been hearing him play similar sets at festivals across the world. There wasn’t anything in this set that seemed to break from any of the other recent sets he’s been playing. This isn’t necessarily a bad thing, an artist will play what works, but I was hoping to perhaps hear something new.
Deecee transitioned nicely from Astrix with the WARRIORS remix of System of a Down‘s BYOB and proceeded to keep the energy high with banging psy tracks. The attendance dropped immediately after Astrix finished, which is a shame since Deecee played an outstanding second set. By 3:30AM there were fewer than 60 people where there were several hundred only minutes before.
Right at 4AM the management turned up the house lights, which is no surprise considering that there were no more than a dozen people left dancing. I think that the organizers had anticipated this during the night because DeeCee and JayJay played a B2B set that lasted an hour, instead of an hour each as was posted on the event page. If you’d like to see photos from the night, head to our Facebook page photo albums section.
It was another stellar U4RIA Trance Collective event, with outstanding sets from Astrix and the supporting artists HNRSound, Deecee and JayJay. Keep your eyes open for the next event from Electric Escape on the horizon!
PARTIAL TRACKLIST:
HNRSound
Tim Penner – Shadows Light
Solid Stone – Heart Call
Solid Stone – Pushing Up Jax Jones – Go Deep (Grum remix)
Motorcycle – As the Rush Comes
Solid stone – Signs of the Future
Orkidea – Nana (Jerome Isma-ae remix)
Luminary – Amsterdam (Smith & Pledger update)
Sunny Lax & Aneym – Everything’s a Lie
Above & Beyond – Satellite (Ilan Bluestone remix)
Jason Ross – Me Tonight
Deecee
Mark Sixma & Emma Hewitt – Restless Hearts
Above and Beyond – Sun and Moon
MaRLo – Atlantis
Simon Patterson – Smack (WAIO Remix)
Cosmic Gate ft. Jes – Yai (Here We Go Again)
The Prodigy – Voodoo People
Astrix
1200 Micrograms – Mescaline (Astrix Remix)
Astrix – Deep Jungle Walk
Astrix – The Old Monsters (Mashup)
DeeCee & JayJay B2B
System of a Down – BYOB (WARRIORS remix)
Vini Vici & Brian Kearney – We are the creators
Pop Art – Disco madness
Alien Project & Shanti – Tetris
Cosmic Gate & Orjan Nilsen – Fair Game
Liquid Soul & Vini Vici – Universe inside me
Mandragora & Groovaholik – Wild Wild West (Sesto Sento Remix)
LINKS:
Electric Escape
Event Page
Nest
Astrix
Facebook
SoundCloud
DeeCee
Facebook
SoundCloud
Scott Copeland – EDM TOR
