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Features
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| Mindbenderz talk ‘Lord of the Rings’ and fishing, as well as the creation of their new album ‘Celestial Gateway’! | | Iono-Music artists One Function, Eliyahu, Invisible Reality and Dual Vision talk Robert Miles, kids, dogs and vinyl, while we chat about their current releases! | | Luke&Flex talk influences, the Irish rave scene, why Flex wears a mask and Play Hard, their new EP out now on Onhcet Repbulik Xtreme! | | Lyktum expands on his new album ‘Home’ – talking about his love of storytelling, creating new harmonies and the concept behind his musical works. | | Pan talks getting caught short crossing the Sahara, acid eyeballs and tells us Trance is the Answer, plus shares his thoughts on his latest release 'Beyond the Horizon' - all from a beach in Spain! | | Miss C chats about living with the KLF, DJing in a huge cat’s mouth, training her brain and the upcoming super-duper Superfreq Grande party at LDN East this Saturday, 16th September! | | NEM3SI$ - I Live for the Night – talks superficiality, psychopaths, and bittersweet success, ahead of a plethora of evocative, emotional, and passionate upcoming melodic techno releases! | | Psy-Sisters Spring Blast Off! We talk to DJ competition winner ROEN along with other super talents on the lineup! | | Blasting towards summer festivals with Bahar Canca ahead of Psy-Sisters Spring Blast! | | Shyisma talks parties, UFO's, and Shotokan Karate ahead of his upcoming album 'Particles' on Iono-Music! | | SOME1 talks family, acid, stage fright and wolves - ahead of his upcoming album release ‘Voyager’ on Iono-Music in February 2023! | | The Transmission Crew tell all and talk about their first London event on 24th February 2023! | | NIXIRO talks body, mind and music production ahead of his release 'Planet Impulse' on Static Movement's label - Sol Music! | | Turning the world into a fairy tale with Ivy Orth ahead of Tribal Village’s 10th Birthday Anniversary Presents: The World Lounge Project | | The Psy-Sisters chat about music, achievements, aspirations and the 10-Year Anniversary Party - 18/12/22! | | A decade of dance music with Daniel Lesden | | Earth Needs a Rebirth! Discussions with Psy-Trance Artist Numayma | | Taking a Journey Through Time with Domino | | New Techno Rising Star DKLUB talks about his debut release White Rock on Onhcet Republik! | | PAN expands on many things including his new album 'Hyperbolic Oxymoron' due for release on the 14th April 2022 on PsyWorld Records! | | Psibindi talks all things music including her new collaborative EP 'Sentient Rays' on Aphid Records, her band Sentience Machine and 10 years of Psy-Sisters! | | N-Kore talks Jean-Michel Jarre, unfinished tracks and fatherhood! | | Celebrating International Women’s Day and Ten Years of Psy-Sisters with Amaluna | | A Catch Up with John Phantasm ahead of his upcoming set at the Tribal Village 4 Day Outdoor Event in Kent 6-9 May 2022! | | 'The Maestro that is Tristan talks barn owls, Shazamming and keeping it Psychedelic ahead of his upcoming performance at the Tribal Village 4 Day Event in Kent 6-9 May 2022! | | DJ talk with Psyrenzo ahead of his debut set at Tribal Village, the Steelyard this Friday 14th January 2022! | | TENZO aka Overdrive talks freely about launching his new act which will be showcased at Tribal Village, Steelyard on 14 January 2022! | | A long overdue catch up with JourneyOM ahead of his next Tribal Village party this Friday 14th January 2022 at the Steelyard, London! |
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Frantic Double Header Part 2: Chemistry - Frantic vs Sundissential
Reported by bunny
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Submitted 08-12-02 22:46
Two Hard Houses, both alike in dignity,
In fair Camden Town, where we lay our scene,
Where classic tracks build to new ecstasy,
As masters mix what will come, with what has been...
Ok, so perhaps it wasn’t quite a contest of Shakespearean proportions, but with two of the biggest names in Hard Dance squaring up to each other as the big showdown to the Frantic weekend, it certainly wasn’t going to be any paltry playground scrap, either. Add in a battle for web supremacy in the upstairs bar as the UK’s leading dance websites tussle it out for the right to call themselves the Lord of the Webring and you’ve got quite an event on your hands 
We pitch up at just gone 10 and after a refreshingly quick trip to the cloakrooms (both of which were open and doing brisk business) it’s down through the hallowed Tunnel Of Light and into the party. Spencer Freeland’s just polishing-off a fine selection of uplifting tunes for a bright and bubbly crowd that’s filling up the main room by the minute. So with the night still in its nappies and the air-con blasting us with stiff breezes like snowmens’ farts, we take advantage of the rare amount of space (available for a limited time only) and indulge in a vigorous warm-up session. Got to get those limbs primed and ready, cause it’s gonna be a tough and taxing night ahead!
10.30 rolls around and Guffy takes over, throwing in the contrasts with a deep and dirty set of borderline progressive Hard House. It’s definitely an unusual and daring choice for a Frantic event, turning its back on the traditional aim-for-the-stars-and-just-keep-going strategy that defines the Frantic sound for something a little more testing and perhaps at a later time it might not have worked. But in an early slot such as this it just seemed to fit and although I can’t say it’s my first choice in dance music I still found myself working up a mean sweat, along with the rest of the eager-beaver bouncers. Extra credit has to be added for the mean mashed-up mix of My Sharona that was thrown in near the end, creating a Twilight Zone moment of the highest calibre that almost made me have an accident through stomping and laughing so hard
Time to bomb it up those stairs to the Black and White bar cause it’s 11pm and time for the set of Mr HarderFaster himself, Tom Allen I said it several times that night and I’ll say it again now – wicked set Tom! Hehehe, we were stomping away like our feet were afraid of the floor as a deluge of banging/bouncing/banging/bouncing tracks (set off by the all-new and improved, sharper than Lily Savage’s tongue sound-system) blast out across a bar buzzing with people. Breather’s Come On and Prime Mover’s Feel What I Feel set the pace and with Hallucination as the sign-off tune the net result is in an hour of high-class beats and boshing, leaving a tougher-than-tough call for the competition to rise up to. Harderfaster 1 Everyone else 0
Back in the main room and the Most Energetic Man Of Hard Dance, Steve Hill, is coming up trumps on the decks despite the technology’s odd tissy fit (also happened in Lee Haslam’s set, bloody dance gremlins trying to hijack our happiness again) with the kind of set that can only mark him out as one of the DJs to keep an eye/ear/body-part-of-your-choice out for in 2003. Taiko’s Silence, a brain-blendingly mashed-up mix of Firestarter and the gorgeous Chemical Love (if you could hear sunsets, this is what they’d sound like) generate enough euphoria in the room to make even the hardest of hearts melt. By the time Lee Haslam arrives to mix up a little more magic the bloodstream of everybody in the place is pumping pure endorphins.
Which, it turns out, is just as well because there’s no end to the elation as far as I can see. Haslam’s own definitive tune of the year, Music Is The Drug, gets injected into the set early on to make sure that there’s no fear of the placebo effect; cause tonight a packed-out Camden Palace gets high on the best therapy in town... damn good music. The sublime mix of Sunscreen’s Love You More tumble’s out across the dance floor and a couple of thousand people dissolve into warm, soft fuzziness The night may still be young but so are we – and feeling younger by the second... ‘Such a good feeling is coming over me’ guess that just says it all, really!
Putting a cap on the fuzzy factor for now, the next contender to the Hard Dance throne, Tom Harding, bangs out the drumbeats in a deep, dark, dirty and delicious set of Hard Trance/House that gets every punter in the place hot under the collar while their braincells begin to ignite. After half an hour of hardcore floorboard abuse we head off upstairs to catch Phil Reynolds’ first set of the night, hoping vainly (since it’s the second room and therefore supposedly a touch more laid-back) for a little light relief.
Yeah right, some chance! This is Chemistry after all; the only thing you’ll find chilled here are the drinks. Up in the Black and White bar it’s going off left, right, centre, diagonally and anyway you care as a menagerie of munted monkeys throw all kinds of shapes to a all-time classics set. Ian M.'s Dreamer and Signum’s Coming On Strong both take us back to bigger, better, brighter times but its when The Edison Factor's The Beginning slams full-speed from the speakers that the bunch of us really lose all sense and sensibility The only smudge on an otherwise sparkling set is the room temperature, which is hovering somewhere around the level where mercury evaporates (although this does result in a lovely little waterfall effect from the metal tubing in the ceiling!) so after The Beginning us lightweights admit defeat + slump back downstairs to the relative cool of the main room.
Talk about good timing though! Just as we make it onto the main balcony Voltswagen’s The Weekend Has Landed, erm, lands and the crowd takes off like a cyber supernova. Tom Harding’s wrapping up a blistering set with a full-force mix of horns, hoovers and the most impressive scratching seen outside a skin-allergy clinic. He might not make it across the North Sea that often but when he does, you can bet it’s more than worth it.
Now you might well think that Mr Harding would be a tough act to follow but Rob Tissera rises to the challenge with the kind of determination that would put Rocky to shame. A hammering mix of Bad Ass blends into what has to be the most eclectic set of the night – a true journey into sound Grabbing the audience by the scruff of the neck Rob drags us straight through a torrent of Hard Trance and Hard House, takes a quick detour through some techno and finishes by stomping all over some bouncy Hard House from a great height. It’s a set of all sorts dished out by a DJ who’s got it all; he’s got rhythm, he’s got music, he’s got us going... so who could ask for anything more?
But we’re greedy little beggars and that’s exactly what we do want! Too much is never enough for a dedicated disco bunny so when Phil Reynolds steps into the booth at 4.30 you can be sure as hell no one’s complaining (although their feet might have something to say about it later on ;-)). Throwing out a set so intensely blistering it’s bordering on the radioactive, Phil easily equals the quality of his earlier set... and then pushes back the boundaries even further. Society, Hallucinogenic Effect, Dreams (just so good to hear the gorgeous build-up and breakdown out again) all propel us up far beyond the reach of reality but it’s the final track, Remedy, that guarantees it’s gonna be a long, long time before we all fall back down to earth...
So did the Frantic double-header weekend end with a bang? Did the universe start with one? And as for who emerged victorious from this Hard Dance clash of the titans, one look around at the almost post-apocalyptic state of Camden Palace is enough to confirm: The true winners of this war were us, the clubbers
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Other Features By bunny:
It's about music - interview with Alex Parsons
Monkey business as usual: interview with Shaf De Bass
Twistathon – Twist’s 12 Hour 1st Birthday Bonanza
Zoology's 2nd Birthday - Review!
becomeone: Unified in Sound - Review
The views and opinions expressed in this review are strictly those of the author only for which HarderFaster will not be held responsible or liable.
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Comments:
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From: Luckyfuka on 9th Dec 2002 11:43.11
' and the air-con blasting us with stiff breezes like snowmens’ farts '
He he. Just were did that one come from. Sound like a top night. shame I missed it.
From: [Swe]Johannes on 9th Dec 2002 17:24.26
sorry to be negative but I found the main room way boring until about 2am. anyone?
From: Absolutely Fabulous on 10th Dec 2002 14:26.50
Good to see Sunscreem's still getting an airing after all these years..... pressure us!! Push that feeling on sweeties!!
From: maliksta on 11th Dec 2002 03:32.44
PHIL ROB AND MR HILL, and TOM HF...
What a top night, wish I was there too!
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