Dj Kai (www.dj-kai.com) was the warm up DJ for Tiesto (at first I thought it was Satoshie, only because I saw an Asian-looking person behind the decks
). His electro-tribal-funk house music was interesting as it really got the crowd going. I didn't buy it for several reasons: one, my low tolerance for repetitive house beats; two, my strong bias for Trance music; three, he had minimal interaction with the crowd; and four, his mixing skills I found mediocre as he was having noticeable problems with transitions.
Anyway, that wasn't Kai's night, it was that of DJ Tiesto, so few people on the dancefloor cared about what Kai had to offer. His set was simply designed to be a warm up set. Whether that was the initial intention, it's another story. The point here is that I have witnessed many live warm up sets that exceeded expectations, sometimes even turning out to be much better sets than the main ones.
Tiesto uncharacteristically showed up and started playing at midnight. He usually does so around 1 or 2. The reason for this, I assume, was that the crowd was 18+ and it was a Thursday night.
Tiesto's first hour was sensational. He hammered every single promising track he had compiled in his ISOS 5, opening up the set with Alex Stealthy's Something IS Wrong. The crowd, to my utmost surprise, went nuts (you gotta give more credit to the American clubbers, they are becoming more and more accustomed to electronic dance music, given the business-attractive and huge American market). I remember listening to Zanzibar, Tales from the South, Empty Street, Moonlight Party, Second Turn, Technophobia, Like A Waterfall, two or three astounding melodic tracks with guitarish sounds. It was progressive house at its best!
Tiesto's second hour was less melodic and more techy. This is when I started to lose interest. Even the dutch group of young people that I met and danced with throughout the night couldn't convince me of staying any longer. Knowing my unfamiliarity with tech trance, I couldn't recognize any track. I left the club around 2:30; by that time, I was exhausted and I could barely stand on my feet. The little dancing space I had (full house inside the club), the smell of human sweat and smoke machine all over my clothes, the fact that I had to be at the office in 5 hours, didn't help either.
Regarding the club, it is huge, it's got two floors, more than 4 bars, very well-equiped (sound and light is state of the art). However, the dancefloor could host a maximum of 1,000 clubbers, so Boston's Avalon, I guess, is bigger in that area.
I never had the chance to stick around to talk to tiesto after his performance. I was promised earlier a lunch with him (like I said in an earlier post), but that never happened due to the fact that the person who was supposed to set this up, an Eric Dumonde, never called me or emailed me. That's fine, I am still content with what happened to me on New Year's Eve in 2002. One last piece of bad news is that Club Glow's official policy is no cameras or any sort of recording inside the club. Anyone who has been to the club or lives in Washington can relate to my frustration. They took the battery of my digital camera before entry. They put the battery in an enveloppe with my initials on it. I grabbed it on my way out of the club. That was ridiculous. But I couldn't do anything about it except showing my
and bewliderement.
All in all, I will always enjoy seeing Tiesto live. It's hard to judge Thursday night, because too many factors are involved. But if I was pressed to do so, I would give it a 7/10. Tiesto's performance in Beirut was much more interesting, again, for many different reasons.
DJ ÄLESUND
