Trance/Grime in Ireland

[Caution: This post is long, and most of it is about music that you may not know about or like. Proceed accordingly. Written mostly on Saturday afternoon on the bus to Galway]

When we walked into our hostel on Thursday I saw an ad for a show Friday night, Armin Van Buuren. I have never seen this world famous trance DJ before, and he’s been on my list, so I knew I shouldn’t miss this. I also made a goal for the trip to see a good show while in Europe to see how the dynamics were different and this fit the bill nicely (although I would love to see another show in Germany and plan to look for opportunities to do so). I grabbed a ticket online Friday morning.

Later on Friday I ran across a record shop in a Dublin alley and stepped in for a few minutes while the other guys went on ahead to dinner. After stepping in and immediately beginning to bob my head and tap my foot to the track playing I knew I was likely to be there for a while, so I didn’t want them to have to wait around. I found a number of vinyl and used CDs that I would have loved to get my hands on and continued to really enjoy what they were spinning in the place. But it wasn’t until I moved to the new releases that I found the real goldmine… whole stacks of albums labeled things like “Electro”, “Dubstep/Grime”, genres no respectable store in the States would ever carry. I knew I would have to cash in on this, and began scouring. I found several albums I had been looking for, but I can find that stuff on Amazon easily, so I thought I could do better. I pulled out a couple and asked the guy behind the counter to show me some others like them that were good and things I would never find in America. He pulled out half a dozen more and set me to listening through them. It was great chatting with the guy and having some connection as I’ve found so few people into this stuff before… there aren’t many in Philly who seem to be down with even listening to it, and only a handful that seek it out, collect and spin it. I ended up grabbing albums by The Plastician and Kotchy89 (I think.. don’t have it on me as I write this so the name may be a bit off). As a bonus, the guy threw in another still unreleased mix album, and info on another show that night by the guy who we had been listening to through the PA. I was super bummed since I already had tickets to Van Buuren. I ended up missing this show as we watched Naruto until too late to go, but I also got the site where I could download another mix with some of the tracks, so no complaints. And as I’ll explain, Armin was really great…

Anyway, after Naruto last night I headed out alone, no one else willing to brave the night or the dance with me (they all ended up going out later though, the jerks!). It was a bit cool but still felt good in just a t-shirt, which was fortunate as that was all I had. I had no idea what to expect, so I decided to leave my passport and credit card at the hostel and just take cash, a map, and a photo ID in case things got crazy… fortunately (unfortunately?) they didn’t, but I had my passport # and Matt’s cell number written on my inner arm just in case. It was a half hour walk to south Dublin and Tripod, the venue, and I really enjoyed it. Walked through a new part of the city (Grafton St) that was really cool at night (good enough to check out again today, which someone may write about later), and saw many interesting folks. I made friends with some cute, possibly German? girls, but I couldn’t help them find what they were after, not being local myself, so they were soon on their way. There was a huge line at the venue, and I probably looked the fool trying to figure out how to get my will call ticket (I’m sure more than one person thought “idiot American”, oh well) but got in and grabbed a drink (my standard for shows although they didn’t have any monster or red bull, but the Irish substitute, called Burn, was pretty good too) just before Van Buuren came on.

Within 15 seconds of the first womp womp, about the time the synth kicked in, the entire front of the room started a rousing chant of “Whoomp! There it is! Whoomp! There it is!” I doubt there are many cities in the world besides Dublin that would greet a famous trance DJ like this. The fact that this chant continued on and off all night, is one that I hope has not been shared with any other AVB show, and said a lot about what was to come. I really found it hard to believe. The dance floor was a lot sparser near the front than I’m used to, and I situated myself off to the side near one of the two big speakers, almost at the front, for most of the show. There was a projector screen blocking the view of the DJ booth from this angle (boo! Bad venue! Bad!) but I moved more central quite a bit as well so I could see fairly well. The music was really great. I enjoyed it a lot more than Tiesto last summer for some reason. Trance is trance, and as someone who doesn’t study the genre, I don’t think I recognized a single song, but there were some epic drops and builds, lots of great drum lines, and some really really good hooks and vocal loops, and I danced like a maniac for most of the night despite my feet being exhausted already.

Perhaps more interesting was the crowd. Most of the people there did not look especially different than the normal mix we have seen on the streets here, which was surprising as the same show in the States would be full of alts, faux-alts, candy ravers, and a mix of other indie stereotypes, besides the normal slight majority of mainstream guys in button downs who like to jump too much. I did see a few people who would fall neatly into the above mentioned groups, but I could count them on my two hands. Even so, and perhaps because of the space, the average quality of dancing was higher than I’m used to at these shows. Most interesting of all, everyone was extremely friendly and happy for us all to be there. I had my back slapped, my hand shaken or high-fived, and drinks waved to me more in the three hours than I usually get in half a dozen shows, and there was a lot less angry pushing and such. The girls were pretty standard other than the lack of interesting costumes as mentioned above. No one brought glo sticks and I didn’t see much in the way of more intricate dancing either, which was disappointing, but I did my best to represent.

Armin went on at 12:30 and played until after 3am, which was pretty amazing to me. On the walk back I did some great people watching on the street and it was again, a nice night. I headed over to the bar where the other show was happening but it looked like it had wrapped about the same time. Oh well. Made it to bed around 4am, truly a great night.

[later note: sat night in Galway (more details on that later) I met a street performer who was doing Po (sp?) and talked with him about this briefly. Apparently it is very uncommon in Ireland and he actually picked it up in France a few years ago. He was also crazy interested in burning man and we talked about that for a while. He looked like the guy from mgmt and had fun harassing passersby with his swinging balls of flame.]

-jc