- Having arrived slightly later than I had hoped, the first thing which caught my attention (well it was hard to miss) was a line that at first glance closely resembled the line up I was faced with at Paul Van Dyk a couple of months earlier. Fortunately this time lining up was not necessary and I gratefully eased my way in through the member’s line.
This was my first trip to sublime since Paul Van Dyk graced our shores and I was interested to see whether there had been any changes to the set up. I can’t say that I was surprised to see that no there hadn’t been. Actually I tell a lie, the night did see the launching of “the largest mirror ball cluster in the southern hemisphere”. This was quite impressive, but it didn’t look all that much bigger than the old one to me. Judging from the number of admiring faces looking up towards it throughout the night I gathered that the majority were more awe-stricken than myself, so it has to be considered as a welcome addition for the sublime regulars. This along with a quality laser show added to what was already a ‘hands in the air’ atmosphere.
Peewee as always got the crowd going by spinning a nice mixture of anthems and fresh new tunes. Sahara rave and Punk spring to mind as a couple of personal highlights. His energy and enthusiasm behind the decks after so long in the industry is great to see, and it’s always that much more enjoyable for the crowd to see a dj who looks as though he’s having as good a time as they are!
Jumping Jack was up next and he basically picked up where peewee left off. I generally haven't enjoyed his sets all that much in the past but he was pretty much on the mark this time, despite his dropping of the occasional “time fillers.”
The most interesting/original set of the night belonged to Nik Fish, who fresh from his trip to the Love Parade in Berlin kicked his set off with some driving hard german techno (as promised). It was great to hear Nik trying something different for a change and I thoroughly enjoyed the first part of his set before he began to stray back to his more traditional style. A large section of the crowd seemed to struggle to get into it, but that is to be expected as I’m sure a majority of them haven't been exposed to a great deal of techno in the past. Is sublime at last beginning to step out of its pigeonhole?? Or was this just a one-off? Hopefully not, but only time will tell...
A portion of my night was also spent checking out the silver room with Ben Korbel and Andrew James and I have to say that it was excellent, would be nice to see a few more ppl venturing in there though. Hard to describe the music, I’d say a mixture of slightly harder prog/tribal and even a little breaky at times. Nice to see Andrew James back on the sublime bill, I’ve said it before and I’ll say it again, this guy deserves far more recognition than he gets.
Overall the night was excellent, almost all attendees looked like they were having a great time and most were in good spirits which sometimes is not the case at this venue. Also, despite the long line up, it wasn’t too crowded inside (spoke to a couple of people inside who had apparently lined up for over 2 and a half hours! Ouch)
Well done the Sublime crew for putting on yet another successful birthday event.