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Ministry of Sound NYE Party |
Ministry of Sound NYE Party 2009
The one and only Ministry of Sound took over The O2 Arena in London on NYE to see the new decade in, in style!!! And what a night it was! With headliners Deadmau5, Justice, Calvin Harris and Eric Prydz this was certainly a night not to be missed, and if you were elsewhere well you might just have missed out! The tickets went on sale earlier on in the year with seating or standing options available and me and my friends opted for seating tickets. One reason being because they were a lot cheaper and secondly we thought the layout would be just like a concert with your designated seat where you would sit all night and dance in that space when you wanted. The tickets we purchased stated it was on the upper tier, very high up from the stage so what with this in mind we weren’t expecting anything spectacular…that was until we got there of course! The whole of the floor seating had been replaced by floor space, a high platform DJ booth with amazing lights in the middle and bars at the end. The floor space had become one massive dance floor with the stage at one end and a bar at the other…so instead of it being a concert layout like we expected, the whole space had transformed into one big nightclub with suburb lighting, a ear bursting sound system and enough seats around the sides to chill the f**k out!
We arrived just in time to see the New Year in after chilling out in one of the many bars in the O2 Arena and having to squeeze our way into the actual arena after a long queue and tough security measures. However, we made it just as Calvin Harris started the midnight count down and after hanging around at the bar for most of the count down. We said our Happy New Years, grabbed our first drinks of 2010 and headed straight to the stage where Deadmau5 had started his set with ‘Midnight Madness,’ just a little ironic! I was expecting the dance floor to absolutely crammed but it seemed people just wanted to dance in their own space and we managed to make it all the way to the front of the stage to grab a sensational view of Deadmau5 doing his thing with his flashing trademark mouse head. One of my friends is a BIG Deadmau5 fan so she knew all his tunes and he played a mixture of stuff from ‘Random Album Title’ and the newer album ‘For Lack of a Better Name.’ One of my personal favourites of the night was ‘Moar Ghosts N Stuff’ (great electro at its best). During the drop of this track the Canadian DJ placed a white sheet over his head and flew up in the air above the DJ booth, well that’s something you don’t see most DJ’s do these days which continued to raise the energy of the night. The set continued well into the early hours of the morning and received a lot of appreciation from the crowd, most of whom were wearing glow sticks shaped as mouse ears on their heads - classic!
Deadmau5 has been a rising star in the progressive house genre of electro music over the last two years and I think this meteoric set will only propel him further to the top. With most of his stuff border lining on house and electro, he got to show off a lot of his new tunes which if like me you haven’t heard before you will definitely be listening to a lot more of his stuff in the near future. ‘Strobe’ was a great tune to push into the set, although a slightly darker tune than the rest of his upbeat house songs. It had the audience bopping along all the same and the crowd just seemed to grow larger as the night progressed. ‘Hi Friend’ (one for the download) was another popular hit and then Deadmau5 finished on an almighty high dropping the Christmas No 1, Rage Against the Machine’s ‘Killing in the Name’ which had EVERYONE jumping and moshing!!! What a tune to finish on!
We haven’t seen much of Justice in the last year as they have been taking a year off making the new album and the last time I saw them live was at I Love Techno in 2008, so it was great to see the French duo back in action and both DJing together at the O2 as I had heard rumours that only one would be turning up to do the DJ set. The rumors were wrong and they both took to the high platform in the middle of the floor to an array of fans crossing their arms in the air to signal their album ‘Cross’. The fantastic, flamboyant, fabulous Justice (Pete Tong’s words) started the night with Genesis, which if you’re a Justice fan it had you on your toes to see what they would drop next. With the lyrics ‘disco, disco’ dropping in (from second album ‘A Cross the Universe), I was in my prime as they played the almighty ‘Phantom’ followed by ‘Let There Be Light.’ WOW! The set was a mixture of their tunes (‘DNVO’, ‘The Party’, ‘Phantom PT 2’) remixed with some of the best electro tunes out there including Soulwax’s ‘NY Excuse’, Chemical Brother’s ‘Block Rockin Beats’ and some classic Daft Punk tunes. This early performance in 2010 in my eyes even topped the I Love Techno set back in 2008. Its amazing to see what a year off can do to help your career if you choose it carefully. Tonight prooved that no one has forgotten about Justice and ‘D.A.N.C.E’ believe it or not did what it said on the cover, it had everyone dancing. What can only be described as a sea of ravers from throwing shapes to skanking was something you would stereotypically see on a well edited live stadium / festival concert dvd. Their best drop for me was ‘Stress’ which is a lot different from the other stuff on the young DJ’s albums but still goes down extraordinary whenever played live and they played the tune for a good 5 minutes mixing it in with another house tunes and dropping in the most recognisable electro-infused synths and beats of the entire song. They played up to the best bit of the song before dropping in the version off their second album – definitely a must see! Finishing on Simian Mobile Disco’s remix of ‘We Are Your Friends’ they had everyone singing along – truly brilliant!
Eric Prydz followed on from Justice and as I haven’t seen much of him apart from the recent commercial ‘Pjanoo’ from Summer 2009 and ‘Call On Me’ it was good to become educated which included listening to a lot of heavy house tunes – truly Ibiza. After what must have been 5 hours of straight dancing, myself and my girls were exhausted so we had to call it a night missing the end. Ministry of Sound haven’t been doing much lately what with competition such as Fabric and the much loved Matter taking over the clubbing scene in London, so this must be the start to some great upcoming nights. To listen to the sets head to BBC iplayer to catch the live coverage of the night.
http://www.bbc.co.uk/iplayer/episode/b00pfn3z/Christmas_and_New_Year_on_Radio_1_New_Years_Eve_Live_from_London/
Kayleigh Bell
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