I remember bumping into Pervurt halfway during the boys' set and telling him "I just found the opening line for my review", but we'll get to that in its right time.
For the past few years, two Dutch men have been climbing up the Trance ladder with subtlety.
One, commonly known as Joop made quite the first impression with his debut single Act Of God back in 2003 on ID&T, redefining how modern Hard Trance ought to sound. Following up with Sonzus and its haunting vocals on the same label mentioned above, then joining the High Contrast team of elite producers with The World followed by Trance Energy 2007 Anthem The Future and most recently the Prominent | On Top Of Things EP, Joop developed a solid reputation of being among that scarce cluster of producers who refrain from showering the scene with release after release, instead opting to producing then releasing rare A-Class gems, all of which have been tested on dancefloors all around the globe and proven to leave the venue in savage destruction.
The other Dutch man we speak of goes by the name of Leon Bolier. Anyone who's been around TH long enough or who knows me well enough has an idea of where Mr. Bolier ranks in my personal preferences: to me, he is indisputably "producer of the year 2007". Yet his legacy roots back earlier than this year. Bolier's achievements kicked off with him remixing BT's classic trancer Anomaly - Calling Your Name under his early alias Subsphere (with Lady Jan Johnston on the vocals by the way, and Leon's brother Bart being the other half of Subsphere!). When you get released on Armin's Captivating Sounds sublabel, you know you have a bright future ahead of you, and Leon indeed had one. Between the aliases and collaborations of Subsphere, Solar Express, Mindsensation, B&W, Supresa, Precursor, Innerstories, and evidently his own name Leon Bolier, his artworks were signed by an entire array of the scene's leading labels, supported by virtually every A-Class Trance DJ internationally, and featured on such referenced compilations as In Search Of Sunrise and A State Of Trance to name a few, let alone his remixes with production partner Joop that have raped so many crowds they ought to be issued a restraining order from clubs all over the planet!
The time had finally come for the Trance Energy 2007 headliners Leon Bolier & Joop to migrate their criminal activities to the clubbing capital of the Middle East: Beirut city! Landing in Lebanon late Thursday night, the organizers and ourselves began touring the boys around Lebanon's gastronomic and musical hotspots. Lebanese food always seems to find favor among its discoverers, and the Lebanese nightlife also seems to impress those who experience it first, which was the case of our dear guests this time too. Friday night arrived and the boys were scheduled to play a mini-set for L-Bar's one year anniversary party, since one of its owners is none other than Q Entertainment. After sharing some drinks and laughs with us, Leon & Joop climbed up the DJ booth and began their "teaser". For the next hour or so, all of Johnny, Rania, and I had eyes looking like this
and jaws looking like this 
. What we were hearing was, without any exaggeration, Tech Trance such as we never knew it. Not only were we unable to identify most of the tracks, but the sound they were transmitting was so distinct it left us speechless, not speechless because we had no words to describe how good it was, but speechless because none of us wanted to distract the other with talking due to how focused we were on the music. Evidently, we all were thinking the very same thing: "if the preparty sampler is that friggin' good, what's left for tomorrow's main set?!". After 24 hours, we got the answer.
Arriving at Forum sometime past 11, Rania had already masterplanned a surprise for the boys: two posters with their image on them and a funky design, but most importantly a whole lot of writing space for us to leave comments! Most of the THerz signed on the posters and we stormed in Forum with our raving shoes ready to get torn apart and our fists ready to get pumped dry of blood circulation. Amadeus was warming up with an assortment of Progressive Trance and some House/Electro, and the place was gradually filling up with ravers. That's on the surface. Beneath the surface, we were boiling in anticipation, for we knew what we were in for... or did we? Well, we thought we knew. We thought we'd be in for a crazy night filled with mad music. We were wrong. Dead wrong.
The music sucked. Oh no wait, that was PvD... never mind.
(ouch)
Leon & Joop took over the decks at God knows when since we were so anxious that our eyesight was fixated on the DJ stage so much that we couldn't even check our watches! What matters is that they had finally took over the decks, while we began rubbing our hands in preparation for the sweating to come, stretching our arms in preparation for the cramps to come, cracking our necks in preparation for the bone ache to come, and twitching our feet in preparation for the blood clog to come. Joop kicked things off smoothly, playing some melodic material that certainly wasn't devoid of his hard-edged touch. Gradually building up the set with a whole lot of unreleased tracks, the crowd was swallowing down the vibes like a drink of cold water after a soccer game. Enough melodies, thought Joop... let's bring on the filth! Things were getting techier, feet switched from Grooving Mode to Stomping Mode, and Joop knew exactly what he was doing: building up for the bomb to come. Some ass-shaking techtrancer was pumping our eardrum when we begin hearing very familiar elements getting mixed in...
"Hmm, that's a solid kick coming our way."
bom bom bom bom
"Damn, those percussions sure sound familiar!"
bom chika bom chika bom chika bom chika
"Wait a minute, those vocals chops are from..."
aaaa a a aaa a-a a-a-aa
"They're from..."
aaaa a a aaa a-a a-a-aa
"THE FUTURE!!!"
Boom. That vibrating bassline punched in and our physical self-abuse had officially began. At that point, all we wanted to do was fast forward the tune to the breakdown - we just couldn't wait for the melody, the 2 remaining minutes felt like forever! The track broke down and that pre-melody animalistic sound began honking.
Honk.
Honk.
Vocal chops.
Sweeping wind effect.
More vocal chops.
...
MELODY.
Reactions:
Crowd: \o/.
Leon & Joop:
THerz:
So it wasn't the live version that we've all seen on the notorious Trance Energy video, but it was The Future played by Joop himself. Enough said. But we had not had enough, nor had Joop. Next up: Prominent. Like, seriously, what the fuck? The Future then Prominent? I mean, were you planning on causing us a seizure or something? By now our knees were significantly damaged for obvious reasons, and Leon hadn't even gotten his turn behind the wheels yet! So he thought to himself "bleh, I'll give this DJing thingy a shot..."
ha ha
Massacre.
Joop had already bedazzled us with his truly unique taste and his uber-skilled mixing skills, let alone his enthusiastic interaction and stage charisma, so it would've been hard for anyone to match up to such a performance. But as we all already know, Leon Bolier is not just anyone. During the course of his set, I could safely say that not once was the flow (initially set by Joop) disturbed. It was the first time I have ever witnessed a DJ team that is so congruent, that displayed such harmony and understanding. It doesn't take two DJs to play back to back for them to form a DJ Team - it takes two DJs to play side by side. This was precisely what Leon managed to fulfill. He took over from where his partner left off, maintained the flow for a reasonable while, then began pouring his musical madness on us thirsty clubbers.
Massacre.
Leon slams down a bassline, we slam a fist above our head.
Leon throws in some familiar vocals, we sing along with him.
Leon tosses us a madass beat, we toss back some raging shouts.
Leon plays up a wicked melody, we throw our hands in the air.
Leon acts, we react.
Our bodies were asking the music to stop, stop in pity of our drained, but our minds asked otherwise, and Leon was more of a psychologist than a doctor in his decision: "You're not going anywhere, bitches."
Massacre.
Massacre.
As if it's even close to being over! Joop reappears behind Leon, and the two soon begin their true back to back performance. For the remainder of that set, four hands were on the mixer, while our hands were in their usual slot: \o/. Not only did the boys carry on with their crowd genocide under the umbrella of Tech Trance, they also kept dishing in some amazing melodic tracks here and there, and even some classics: Push - The Legacy, Veracocha - Carte Blanche, Art Of Trance - Madagascar... I died.
4:30 AM is one point in time where I did indeed look at my watch, because I needed to note down at what precise time our unfuckingforgettable Leon & Joop experience came to end. Maximal took over for the afterwards, and hammered the remaining crowd with non-stop energy and musical mayhem of some more Tech Trance and even some Techno, the sound he is known for best. A couple hundred ravers refused to leave before Maximal wrapped it up, and he was compelled to stop after slightly less than an hour due to a legal notice. Some of us stayed through for some post-gig chat with Leon & Joop who were clearly so satisfied with the night, and they were so for damn good reasons: Q Entertainment & Pervurt Productions managed, yet again, to deliver premium light and sound (a bit bass-heavy though) and top notch organization just as they have gotten us used to in their previous events, while the crowd managed to prove to the Dutch men that Lebanese live up to their reputation of being party animals. The sun rose on my dimmed eyes as I was cruising back home listening to Summernight Confessions. A small off-topic note on the side: If you have not listened to the breakdown of Summernight Confessions while the sun is rising, you have not heard Summernight Confessions.
We saw the boys one last time the next night to bid them farewell and hand them the signed posters along with some souvenirs. We had a few last chats and laughs, said our goodbyes, and agreed to meet again very soon, be it in Lebanon, in Holland, or on any dancefloor out there. After the music I heard last night, and after getting to know Leon & Joop more personally, there is nothing more I want for 2008 than to have them back in Lebanon, as DJs and as friends.
This was, hands down, the best music played at any local rave this year.
other than that no comment all said by DION we want tracklist and ranimu could have posponed for a few days 
that was so funny!
