This was a night of firsts: Delerium's first Birthday, Delerium's first event at Lakota, and, of course, my first rave of the year! :) I arrived at the venue about 10 minutes early, and was slightly worried to see that there was no queue yet and I was the first person there, but within about 20 minutes, quite a sizeable queue had built up. The venue didn't open until about 20 past 10, and even then they were still setting things up. This meant that everybody was hearded into the bar on the bottom floor of the venue - that being the only room that was open. On the other hand, this also meant that with about 2 minutes of the main room opening, there were a sizeable number of people in there dancing. I put my bag in the cloakroom, and went for a bit of a wander round. Delerium had made quite an effort with the decoration of the venue, with a number of backdrops and hanging-from-the-ceiling-type-thingies in the main room. They also had a laser in there, which I've not seen at Lakota before, and a few amusing 'WANTED' posers featuring various Delerium DJs had been put up around the venue. Next up, I decided to check out the oldskool and jungle room. Unfortunately it was open, but there was no music yet, as the decks didn't have headshells, cartridges or slipmatts in/on them yet. At one point, a small crowd of people gathered and started chanting "JUNGLE JUNGLE JUNGLE" for a bit, in the vain hope that this might speed up the process of getting some music on in there. And in true jungle room style, a small fight broke out in the corner (although this was the only one I saw all night). Eventually, Kickback began his set about 45 minutes late, and started off with some older breakbeat driven hardcore like Groovecontrol and Krazy Knowledge part II. He went on to play some of more modern stuff, and a bit of freeform, dropping tunes like The Squeeler and Take Me Up remix, and threw in a few jump up D&B tunes like Positive (Cru-L-T remix) for good measure. Typical Kickback bit of everything style mashup shenanigans really, and it made a good warmup set. Next up was B*lite, who played for about 2 hours 15 minutes - Flex and Desent didn't play at all. He started off with some jungle anthems (Babylon, Valley of the Shadows, Lighter, Junglist etc), and went on to play a fair bit of old 96-97 jump-up tuneage (Trick of Technology, Intergalactic (POT remix), I Got 5 On It (Aphrodite remix) all got played). He also dropped a few slightly more recent bits like Turbulence. It was certainly an enjoyable set, but I couldn't help feeling that a little more jungle and a little less cheesy jump-up would have been nice, especially since it was the only 'jungle' set of the night. I also popped along to the small USH meetup in the bar (shouts to Recoil, D.Jay, deejaybee, MC Buzz, ravinsarah and Snort for coming along to that). Luckily a combination of pure chance, a few of us knowing each other already, and Snort having a T-shirt with his name on the back of it meant that we all managed to find each other :) After B*lite's set came the low-point of the night for me. Sy was playing a cheese anthems set in the oldskool room (Discoland, Cloudy Daze, Like a Dream and Toytown etc all got dropped), and Brisk was playing Nu Style Gabber in the main room. Not being a fan of either style, I was at a bit of a loose end, so I took the opportunity to have a rest and waffle randomly at various people. An hour later, in complete contrast to Sy's kickdrum driven cheesefest, Cris E Manic played an absolutely quality set of uplifting 93-95 breakbeat hardcore, dropping tunes like SMD1, You Are The One, Naughty Naughty vol.6 side B and DJs Unite vol.1 remix. Tune selection was absolutely spot-on, with a nice mix of full-on anthems and slightly less well-known tunes being dropped, and one or two slightly more jungley bits being played as well. For me, this was by far the best set of the night! And respect goes out to D.Jay with the fancy footwork bizness during this set :) Voltage was on last, and he played another 96-97 anthems set - although it wasn't quite as cheesy as Sy's. I stayed for a little while, but left at about half an hour before the end of the event so I could go and get my train home. Overall, it wasn't a bad night, with Kickback, B*lite and Cris E Manic all playing enjoyable sets, but I was a bit disappointed at inclusion of the 2 96-97 sets in the oldskool/jungle room. I would have much rather heard some actual proper oldskool and jungle in their place.
