Firstly, last Thursday Tim "Avicii" Berg took the decks at NYC's Lavo followed up by Lavo's resident Drek Martinez. I decided it was probably against better judgement in terms of my health to attend, however a few friends went as said it was awesome. Here's a video from the night where he opens with the song which put Sander Kleinenberg on the map a few years back "This Is Ibiza" remixed to become "This is New York". Again I did not attend, but I heard only good things and after my last Drek Martinez experience at Lavo, I'm sure he tore it up afterwords as well.
Friday was by far one of the most spiritual times I've had at Pacha. We got in and checked our coats rather quickly and posted up on the mainfloor during Roxy Cottontail's opening set. Roxy did awesome - she played straight-up fun tracks, stuff everyone knew. The place was really, really crowded though, and people were starting to get anxious because Roxy played until 2. She seemed to even be surprised how long she was on, because around 1:30 she began turning around looking for Afrojack, so who knows what happened. Roxy was a perfect opener though, she had a sick remix of Papa Roach's "Last Resort" which I'd love to get my hands on. All 6'4" of Afrojack got on the tables around 2am. He dubbed the bizarrely random chicken displayed across Pacha's flatscreens the "Afro-chicken", chuckled, and began his set with an awesome version of Bangduck that can be viewed here. There was not a moment in his set where the energy was at anything less than an all time high. He played all of his obvious tracks, a twist on one of his classics though was the way he did Moombah viewable here - watch it and just take in the intensity this guy creates in a crowd and the talent he has. I think the the high-light of the night however was how he closed (and how he often closes, pre-any kind of encore of course) with his Hide and Seek remix because it brings the crowd to a lull and the smashes them with the insane sideways squeaky dutch synth - check out this video here - also a good place to check out Pacha's new LED boards. The night on the whole was a great time, Afrojack actually got choked up at the with how LOUD the "af-ro-jack" chant was at the end of the night. He may be a kid, but he is handling his talent perfectly and delivers every time - a sign of true talent.
Saturday I honestly had little intention to go see Laidback Luke, as Friday had taken almost everything out of me. We had gotten to Pacha at 10:45 and left around 5:30 the previous night, but after a few cocktails and blasting one or two "Leybak Leybak Leybak Lyoook" sets, we got a little excited decided to give it a whirl. After missing the last Metro North and realizing the Ram Van wasn't running, my friends and I began to think that maybe it wasn't worth it and we should just scrap the idea. After finally deciding to grab a cab and give the night one final shot, we realized that by fighting the odds we'd eventually win. As we drank all the way down from the Bronx our moods changed. All of the sudden the radio station which had previously been playing Latin music in our cab played a house song I had never heard of, We Speak No Americano, and finally we arrived at Pacha to Louder than Words - we knew our luck was changing. It just so happened a friend of ours recently got promoted and not only let us cut the line when he saw us get out of the cab, but also gave us free VIP and drink tickets. Immediately we realized we were absolutely supposed to be here and that we had won. We did Pacha that night from a different perspective - in VIP for the first time which was actually really cool and just what we needed from such an intense night previously down below. Junior Sanchez opened for Luke and played an awesome array including Pendulum's The Island, Babylon, and Congorock's remix of One. The intensity was building and we were enjoying our view. Luke delivered and awesome but extremely short set. While I wasn't paying attention to time it could not have possible been any longer than two hours - a big difference from when we saw him do Super Me and You at Pacha last July and he did well past three hours. I'm disappointed he didn't fully play Till Tonight, but the crowd went wild for Timebomb and my favorite mix of the night by far was when he played Dirty Talk and slammed it into No Beef which you can see at about 3:24 of this video - we absolutely lost our minds. The DJ's who closed for Luke were both incredible as well, delivering and absolutely awesome weekend on music. We went downstairs to the basement to retrieve BOTH of my jackets (I had left one there the previous night for Afro) and the basement DJ was bumping Axwell's "Nothing But Love", further reaffirming that we had made the better decision that night. After cabbing it back uptown into the sunrise, my roommate and I realized that out of the last 24 hours, we had spent about 13 in Pacha. Wow.
Waking up around 4 pm the next day (ahhh the pleasures of Winter Break) I toyed with the idea of leaving the city and taking a break or taking advantage of the table my promoter friend got for us for a party being thrown at MeatPacking's Le Bain on the roof of the Standard Hotel. He told me it should be a mellow evening, with almost everything comped and some solid beats in a venue I had never been too. Weighing this against the fact that I had nothing to do Monday, I decided to try it out. The space was really cool and the beats were nice, mellow-lounge with an appropriately up electro flare. Everything was comped and I was having a really nice time. I was out for a cigarette well all of the sudden who steps outside for a cig but Miss Roxycottontail herself! That's right! Immediately I began telling her how much fun I had on Friday and we got into a really great conversation about contrasting the DJ booth at Pacha to that at Santos. She was honestly very nice, very personable, and had nothing but awesome things to say about Afrojack. As if that wasn't enough I went to the bar since our bottle had run out and come face to face with the half of Major Lazer who goes by Diplo. He was very nice as well and took pictures with Roxy and us. So, after aiming for a low-key uneventful Sunday night we actually ran right into two big personalities in the world of electronic music: an awesome end to an incredible weekend.
Now do you see why it took me so long to gather my thoughts?
No comments:
Post a Comment