DJ-ing sometimes gets me to strange places. At other times, even while the club might be familiar, it is the theme of the party that can be "interesting". Last night was one of those moments. The gig was entitled "The Abusement Park" and the theme? Well, take a look at the Facebook site and you will get the idea.
https://www.facebook.com/events/1774418676103298/ The themes at parties I usually play at are dark. Skulls, zombies, even crashed cars are all things that decorate the stage on a semi-regular basis. It is not every day that I perform with a giant penis hanging above me, though. Mind you, this was not some sort of gay event; as you can see, the line-up was all over the place and included artists some might recognize from the heydays of breakcore. The genre always used to have a lot of craziness surrounding it. I still remember playing at an event in Ghent (Belgium) and borrowing my flash light to Scotch Egg, another well-known breakcore artist, who used it to illuminate his setup by keeping it in his mouth his entire set. I remember someone puking on the wall in an overly packed place resulting in the filth getting automatically wiped within minutes by people just trying to get from one point to the other. Last night consisted of guys wearing man-kini's and girls... well, actually looking pretty and dancing a lot.
The crowd was a little more tame and vomit-less, almost as if everyone had been smoking a lot of weed. Judging by the smell, they probably all did, in fact. Consequently, it was a bit hard to figure out what they wanted. At breakcore parties, I usually just play as diverse as possible. I do not want to betray my roots so I often start with drum & bass and gradually move on to some more extreme things. I do usually grab the hardest tracks I have - which, if you are still trying to spin new drum & bass, can be a bit difficult as so many people are still riding the neuro train.
Thankfully, neuro has its harder gems as well and I mixed pretty much every new, hard track I recently acquired next to a good amount of my own music.
Overall, it was a fun night. I hope more people in Europe will be motivated to organize these smaller events again as, for DJ's and crowds alike, it is nice to be able to have a balance between the mega-festivals and these more intimate events. The large events are of course awesome but it sometimes is quite nice to be able to attend a party that does not cost a fortune and is being held close to where you live...