- With a line-up boasting Todd Terry, 2 Many DJs, Princess Superstar & Alexander Technique, Kurtis Matronix, Erol Alkan, Arthur Baker, Richard X, a stellar list of others, plus a 4 day Easter Long Weekend, the Return to New York (“R2NY”) Rave at London Warehouse venue Seone (www.seonelondon.com) held all the makings of an Easter Extravaganza.
But events of this size and nature (5 rooms, including VIP holding over 3000 clubbers) aren’t just about the music. They’re about organisation, production, musical programming, crowd control and most of all, the tying together of these important facets to produce a smooth running event.
So before moving onto the positive aspects of R2NY let’s get the negatives out of the way.
1. Getting in was absolute chaos. Suggestions for future events at this venue would be to expect an influx of clubbers at the critical entrance times of around 11pm – 12am, and to cater for it, with more than one entrance and extra signage to keep the crowd moving. A further suggestion is to block off the entrances at either end of the road to cars and taxi’s as this created extra crowd confusion and problems for the Security staff with crowd control.
2. Don’t piss off your guest list & VIP’s by making them wait over an hour and a half (in many cases) just to get in the door! Don’t then upset them off further by not having had the forward planning to know your own event’s guest list numbers well in advance and therefore not being able to supply them with entrance to the promised areas. I’m not referring to myself in this case, in fact I had a great night of it without the illustrious VIP wristband, what I’m referring to is the hundreds of people in that queue who are in the industry here in London and have supported these events or the artists on the bill or work in the media – these are the one’s you don’t want spreading bad word of mouth on your event and promoters of this calibre know this.
3. The idea with a cloakroom is that you should be able to safely, and relatively quickly, ditch your belongings and then hit the dance floor or the bars to get a good feel for what’s on offer. The cloakroom at R2NY got the same slaying as the entrance to the event. The SEone website indicates that two cloakrooms are available with the venue hire – however I only saw one running on the night (albeit in a good spot, right inside the entrance). Perhaps separate drop-off and pick up points in addition to an increased number of multiple drop-off queues could combat this long cloak room wait for future events and mean that people who have already waited a lengthy time outside aren’t standing around wasting precious dance floor time in again, another queue.
4. With venues of this size (30, 000 sq ft) and nature (5 refurbished arched arena's) it can be hard to get the sound production spot on, and whilst there certainly wasn’t any problems with feedback or poor sound there were some facets of sound production that let down the overall sound. These included the sound being so loud that that you couldn’t hear the person next to you speak – even when screaming at the top of your lungs, some musical overlap between two of the rooms and a tinny high end that 2 days later means I’m still having trouble with my hearing. On the upside though, those speaker boxes packed some pretty damn good punch, and every spot in the rooms was evenly covered and consistently covered.
So the negatives out of the way let’s talk about the positives: Dead-set rocking music, a (slow- starting) but gagging for it by 1.30am crowd, reasonably priced bar drinks (about £3 for beer and water, and £3.50 for a vodka/red bull), overall good production levels in terms room layouts, brilliant and theme befitting VJ’ing, overall good sound coverage and outstanding sets from some of house, electro and hip-hops true originators and current cool cats.
Billed as Todd Terry’s first London gig in 4 years, R2NY was a chance for him to display his current style and win over a crowd that hadn’t heard him play in some time. Precluded by a brilliant warm-up set from Princess Superstar and Alexander Technique, delivering electro, hip-hop and booty funk MC’ing in the way only they can (plus unveiling a current new tune which is sure to be a winner), Todd Terry took control of the decks about 1:45am and quickly made the room his own, serving up tracks such as ‘E Samb’a (Junior jack ) in a loved up house set that merged the old with the new and ensured the entire room were moving their feet in approval.
2ManyDJs cop a lot of flack from various camps for not being as good lives as their CD formats may lead you to believe they are. For me personally, their set was everything I thought it would be and then some. Their set, featuring their trademark cut-up/ mash-up of electro infused house, hip-hop, funk, well placed pop ‘cheesy’ track (think beyonce ‘crazy in love’, Outkast as well as Daft Punk and THAT sample “it’s 10am do you know where your children are?”) meant, quite simply, that the floor was rammed with a jumping, cheering, dancing crowd from the start of their set to the finish of it. Serious music trainspotters may have had more to pick at in their technical skills than me (I picked up two off-perfect mixes), but for me their set was ALL ABOUT having fun and enjoying the music and for that alone it rates as the best entertainment I’ve had on a dance floor in some time.
Great music was also heard from Richard X and Erol Alkan both of whom had the crowd eating out of their hands and a quick visit to the live arena (although in retrospect I really did mean to spend more time there!) ensured that things were also on the right tip there too!
Such great music, combined with a friendly, smiling, dancing (and slightly crazy!) crowd soon meant that problems on the door and long queues were quickly forgotten as everyone did what they came to do, celebrate the Easter Long Weekend by getting down to some fantastic tunes. If this music is truly representative of New York I’m on the next plane out of here...