Wow, what a night! I’m still feeling a little stunned as I write this and my body feels like I ran a marathon. That was easily one of the most epic nights of music We’ve ever experienced. The VCC was packed to the brim but everything was run really smoothly and it was a great crowd to be apart of. Its hard to go wrong when your seeing three of the biggest DJs in the world perform in a room of over 4000 people.
We got in just after Arty took the stage and the there was a fairly small crowd so we quickly moved to the front. We were really excited to finally see him and the young Russian definitely met all of our expectations. He was the perfect warm-up for the rest of the night as he played an energetic blend of big room house and trance that really got the crowd going early. He also looked like he was having an awesome time performing. This is always great to see because the energy is contagious. Some highlights of his set include ‘Mozart’, Its Yours’ (by Mat Zo) and Arty’s new remix of ‘Walking Alone’ by Dirty South & Those Usual Suspects. By the time Benny Benassi came on the crowd had grown substantially and the energy was explosive.
Dirty South & Those Usual Suspects – Walking Alone (Arty Remix)
Going in I was the least excited for Benny Benassi because I had heard pretty mixed reviews about him but he really surprised me with his incredibly rowdy set of electro house and dubstep. Even at 44 years old this guy can put on a solid show and of the three DJs he certainly had the best light show. The first half of the set was dedicated to hard-hitting electro house. His track ‘House Music’ went over especially well. The second half of his 2-hour set featured a lot of dubstep and the crowd certainly had a mixed reaction. Our group was loving it though, and going wild for every drop. One of the biggest tracks of his set was DirtyLoud’s ‘Kill Humans’, which was extremely heavy on the massive speaker system. The highlight for me was when he played ‘Cinema’ and then transitioned it in to the Skrillex remix for the second drop. At the end, just when we thought he was finished, the classic ‘Satisfaction’ vocals came on and he dropped a huge dubstep remix of his most famous song that left us in awe and completely ready for Sander to take the stage.
Benny Benassi – Cinema
Sander van Doorn was the guy we were looking forward to the most and in closing out the night he did not disappoint. This is the second time I’ve been to a Sander show and he is undoubtedly one of the top performers I’ve ever seen. His diverse set took the energy to a climax with epic buildups and brilliant drops. In between the biggest hits he would slow it down with some funkier beats that were great to dance to. After only three or four tracks he had already eclipsed the performance of Arty and Benassi in my mind. The peak of the entire night had to be when he played his new song ‘Chasin’. Even after four hours of dancing this was definitely the track everyone went the wildest for. What I liked best about his set was that he almost exclusively played his own songs and worked his way through the majority of his recent ELEVE11 album. Big tracks like ‘Slap My Pitch Up’, ‘Koko’ and ‘Reach Out’ were received particularly well. Over the course of his set the crowd began thinning out which left us with a lot more room to move around. Towards the end up his set he played the incredibly beautiful ‘Eagles’ featuring Adrian Lux. I doubt there was anyone in the venue without the their hands in the sky for this one. As he wrapped up he played ‘Love is Darkness’ and then the lights went on and the crowd was left cheering and screaming for more. He obliged us with 2 encore tracks and then the extraordinary night came to an end. If we had any energy left at all we would have raced over to Celebrities to see him play again at the after party but we were all too mentally and physically exhausted.
We managed to capture a snap shot of the madness here: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tkb6B_9yD4M&feature=youtu.be
Sander van Doorn – Chasin
Overall, we heard everything we could possibly have wanted to over the unbelievable five hours of music. It was our first show at the VCC and it was a better venue than we expected. The sound system and light show were both high quality and even with so many people there was never much of a lineup for anything. We’ll definitely be at Seasons Festival, the next big VCC show presented by Blueprint (on April 7). This will be headlined by Armin van Buuren and Steve Angello, with support from Morgan Page. The countdown starts now!
Follow Channels and Categories