Sub Culture

I forgot to write down my thoughts about Sub Culture. So here goes, all in all, had a great time, nice event. Ben Sim's, James Zabiela and Dave Lea made my night.

Arrived to find a different line up from the advertised, which annoyed me quite a bit, but it wasn't too hard to re-arrange my night. Not being a big breaks fan meant I didn't enjoy the headliners all that much, and unfortunately the tech took priority over the drum'n'bass, so I didn't see too much of that.

Started off the night with Marco V, who was, well, Marco V. Commercial trance stuff, nothing really amazing. Then spent some time at Phil Hartnol, who did a very nice job, but I didn't like much of his harder stuff, enjoyed the start of his set. There was some guy doing 2-step which was really good, but I had to leave as I can't dance to that stuff. James Zabiela was next on the list, and he delivered a great electro break/big beat set, I throughly enjoyed that, whilst everyone else had to stand around pretending to have fun just to humour me.

It got to be time for the real techno then, caught the end of Mauro Picotto's set - which was some really nice techno. A welcome change from his dodgy trance set from the last time he was here. The middle of his set was a bit too pots'n'pans techno from 99 sounding for my likeing, but the end was what you would expect from Mauro with a nice electro style touch.

Ben Sims set was nothing short of brillient. An absolute master piece as far as I was concerned, pulling out old favourites from techno (devilfish, man alive) and some of his old housey style stuff, a nice mixture of harder techno and recent releases. Absolutely fabulous, made my night.

After that it was propellorheads - who were good, but just didn't have the appeal to me as much as Dave Lea, who actualy delievered a really great hard trance/tech set. He played a tune I absolutely love, but unfortunately I have no idea what it was called. My music-knowledgeable friends were with me at the time, but unlike other occasions they too could say nothign other than "yeah its a good tune. no I dont know what it is." (Bah! whats the point in having friends?)

I should probably also mention every DJ I saw delivered a technically flawless set. I didn't hear any big stuff ups. What a relief. (Zabiela was making some funny noises at times, but I gave him the benefit of the doubt that it was deliberate)

Two very enthusiastic thumbs up.