Summary
It was no doubt a sensational night. Never felt that exuberance and energetic crowd in this party over the years i have been to dance parties. The thrill that the crowds and how participating in the sombre moments throughout the night. It was a well choreographed party with DJs having great fun in mixing their well planned sets to show off their utilities to the crowds. The party with no expenses conserved.

Travel
I travelled early to Antwerp as i was prepared to take some photos in the city. So i left my place around 8.10AM and caught the first available InterCity train to Antwerp which was 8.56AM. Arrived 2 hours later.

Most of the time i was relaxing under the sun at the state park in city centre.

Beginning
About 400 were behind me when i arrived at the entrance. All eager and dressed in totally black, from face paintings right to the jeans. There were French, Germans, Dutch and English all yattling away before the party and greeting each other.

Once the entrance was open which was about 9.15PM people filed into rows filtering through the 6 laned fenced-up gates knowing that we’ll be body searched for any traces of weapons or inflammable liquids. The security did a very basic searching…just the jeans. Then our ticket’s barcode got scanned.

The next gate was for the free magazine. Most got their ID out with the small chip embedded to be scanned and be sent a free mag. I don’t have that Belgian national ID.

The Party
It took the party a while to begin. I think the intention was to fill the dancefloor significantly before turning all the lights.

Okay, here are some pics.

Just before the show started. Empty dancefloor. It went completely packed around midnight, but the door opened more than 2 hours before.

DJ Ghost mixing. The first DJ for the night. He played hard-electro.

Ripped the seats off to make way for dance area.

Quad-pod legs at the stage.

The MC

The big screen at each end of the venue with a pair of lanterns.

The white leg. I counted at least 7 giant 5m speakers.

When Showtek was playing.

The crowd. About 30,000

The seating platform. You can see the tree branches spreading over the dancefloor.

The MC again. Cheering the crowd up.

Ladies with tommy hat

Lighting of the torch

Lady Dana in revolving big screens

The inflated tree branches above

When gabber tunes were on…

Gabber addicts tuning in

All in Black

Heaps to clean up

The aggressive Neophyte and his gabber

You can check out my gallery HERE for the remaining photos.

Interior Design and Technical
The best speaker system i have ever heard. The sound was crisp and they didn’t crank up the volume to the max. I think it’s got to do with EU regulation. There were about 7 loudspeakers suspended around the quad-pods. And the interior of the stage revolves around with its 4 big screens intact. Then there are inflatted tree branches over-bearing the whole dance-arena loosely wrapped with black streamers. It is the first venue where it utilised the seating areas by removing the seats altogether and let dancers enjoy panoramic views while the interior gets lashed with laser arsonals, flame-throwers, water-jets and fireworks.

Music
DJ Ghost was the first performer with his often-cliche remixed tune and then making it to hard-electro. Showtek and Donkey Rollers were pretty good. Donkey Roller was predictable like any of how previous performances. Showtek really did set the edge by making his tunes more theatrical. Dana was under-performing just like in In Qontrol party last week. She doesn’t know how to scratch and the crowd began to disperse at the second half of her set. Promo and Neophyte should have played an hour earlier because almost all of the crowd were pretty much exhausted and not ready for gabber tunes. In my opinion, and expressly viewed by many at that night, Dana should be the last DJ to play and let Promo and Neophyte play before her. Dana does play softer compared to the rest of hardstyle DJs, which would be better so that the crowd don’t have to dance that intensively.

Videos

Introducing Ghost

Introducing Dark-E

Coast2Coast – Home

Donkey Rollers

Black Identity

I’ll post more videos as i upload it.