Well, better than I thought it ever could be! In undertaking the role of journalist, you have to accept the principles of fairness and objectivity, perhaps even moderation and self-control in how you assess the good and bad of the things you encounter. For once, I feel like I need to utterly let go of all that, such was the power and energy of this party, the emotions involved and that feeling that this was one of those moments, not just of clubbing but of your life, that you would never forget.
I've thought about breaking down all the elements of why I think this party is so great, but I think it's better to try and at least, preserve the little mystique about it that remains. Instead here's briefly some thoughts and feelings of what happened one Sunday morning in October.
The alarm clock was set for 6am and I awoke to that bizarre feeling normally reserved for early morning flights to go on holiday or maybe Christmas Day when getting up at ungodly seems usual. Things couldn't have started any worse actually, as due to guestlist problems, some friends couldn't get in; I'm still actually well gutted about this, so moving swiftly on....
After the initial problems, it was about 8am when I got into the club and immediately knew it was much busier than last year. The Main Room was still very full and the Terrace heaving as you'd expect, with Mar-T pumping out some familiar house. I think Loco Dice started about 9 or 9:30, relegated to warm-up DJ no less, I'm sure there haven't been many times he's started a warm-up set at 9 in the morning. Anyway, attempts to battle onto the dance floor proved unsuccessful, so we found a dancing space upstairs from where it was a sight to behold the sprawling mass of bodies, boshing their fists as the bass kept on coming.
Towards the end of Dice's set, around 11, the dance floor was noticeably easier to navigate, albeit the sides of the terrace remained fairly jam packed. Marco Carola stepped up to thrash that brand of funky techno he rules supreme with and the party was now hours in full swing. There were approximately 192 people in the booth, most wearing stupid hats or fancy dress, there was an array of promoters, DJs, island faces too and some of the more interesting objects that made it onto the middle of the floor included some tree foliage and a bar stool.
Of course the main thing that makes the party so great is the music. The shackles completely come off here, the volume is cranked just below ear bleeding and a techno assault is unleashed for the best part of 9 or 10 hours. I'll make one thing clear, even if you're not a techno fan, you won't fail to appreciate what's taking place here, some of the moments are truly epic. 4000 people acting like their side has just scored the winning goal in a cup final repeatedly whilst the music literally infiltrates your mind. It's moments like this we decided that life on the dance floor was for us. Moreover, if you are a techno fan, it's total dream world. A friend, jokingly, asked as we entered hour 10 of being there, "How long would you stay for if this went on till Wednesday?". The answer was irrelevant, compared to the meaning of the question. We were in a moment, one of those moments that you wished would last forever, the mere fact that they don't only serving to make them more special.
Richie Hawtin had bored me a bit when he played at Cocoon a few weeks earlier, yet it couldn't have been more of a contrast here. The now totally sunlit Terrace was throbbing to his power beats, 80s electronica and pure epic bring-the-house-down techno. Even towards the end of his set, when he started pissing about with Traktor a bit too much and looping everything, it didn't really matter. The end dragged out for a good 20 minutes to the point where you didn't think it ever would.
First, there was Blackwater by Octave One, enough to nearly get the waterworks going, followed by a haunting filtered-up vocal of Shout by Tears for Fears, into Spastik by Plastikman. I've heard this track a thousand times, but in this context, being played by its creator, at that moment and under that sound system, boxes were being ticked all over the place and it was overwhelming. When the bass dropped after the first part of the intro, it felt like 3 jets were taking off simultaneously, the force of the sound and power and music from the speakers at that moment physically took your breath away. What a memory!
At a little after 4:30pm, with a dance floor that resembled a festival site (full of rubbish and empty bottles) and Richie Hawtin with t-shirt ripped open and headphones thrown to the crowd, several thousands bedraggled bodies stumbled through the sunlight outside and knew......we all just knew that this was what it was all about.
The countdown to next year has already begun. Check out the selection of videos to get a little flavour of what it's like. Nothing can quite capture the feeling of being there of course....
