Re: S&D review Webster hall
my thoughts:
great night, but then not amazing. however, i "only" stayed til 5 b/c the 2 other friends I was with aren't the type to stick it out til 7am. i know the later it gets, the better so i was feeling a bit sour about having to leave at 5.
i personally felt digweed was much better than sasha. at 1am, diggers came on with his usual mellow opener sound. sasha took over at 2am and spun til 3am. Nothing too memorable so far. sound was minimal yet full with nasty basslines so the crowd was into it. nothing cheesy at all. nothing melodic like the sasha from a few years ago. it was steady but the vibe was not vortex crazy.
then digweed took over at 3am and the first track he put on was on fire! i got really excited since i thought we were at the doorway of the vortex... it was heightened but not vortex.
at 2:50, sasha came on and actually slowed things down a bit and went back to the nasty bass/minimal tunes... it nice and dark but almost a little boring to be honest. he did that for the next hour.
at 3:50 digweed came back on and i thought maybe finally, we'd enter the vortex and stay there... but then it never happend. digweed continued what sasha had started with his previous turn.
at 4:40 or so, sasha too over again and then we left at 5.
i wondered whether they ever hit the vortex/peaktime. i wondered whether sasha even has a vortex. we all know diggers does but does he do it when he's with sasha? those are some of the questions i kept asking myself. the other thing is that i was w/ a friend that have never experienced the vortex and although the music was good, i felt a bit disappointed b/c my friend could not experience it.
some major irratating points:
the venue. webster hall is just terrible. it was just way too crowded and there were no escape spots on the floor - for example, at pacha, at least if you go off to the side near the exits under the floor above, you can find some escape from the crowd. the vip section w/ hardly anyone up there was just rubbing salt into your wounds. i couldn't dance at all - it was that crowded.
some idiot kept adding his own sound to the set with a whistle (?) this happened all night long and i really wanted to find the guy and shove the whistle up his mouth. please don't tell me this was added to the set as effects on purposely.
anyway imo, i thought digweed was much better than sasha.
sasha kept playing tunes with dirty basslines (which is fine in itself) but coupled with minimal noise, as i put it. digweed was similar but his tracks always seemed to have a riff. a melody. nothing cheesy, no melodic prog, but still a riff. it's much easier to "feel it" when your tracks have riffs.