Now in it's third year, Future Dance has established itself as one of the big boys on the rave scene. Here they returned to Bagleys in London for Future Dance 9, with the theme of the night being the lost city of Atlantis. I arrived at Bagleys at dead on 10pm when the event was due to start and they were about 20 minutes late in opening the doors. There was a fairly big queue outside and after a search which involved my genitals being felt (that is illegal you know Mr Security Guard) I was inside for about 11. As I dropped off my coat in the cloakroom the DJs Vinal and Devotion were playing "Badass" in the old skool room so I stopped to brock out to that one. :) Then it was into the hardcore arena where it was Brisk on the decks. I stopped in there for about 15 or 20 minutes and heard him play "Love U More" and a couple of older bouncy tunes in his older style. The reason I only stopped for that long was because I found out that Phil Reynolds was in the Riot arena. He played a wicked hard trance set with powerful riffs and finished off with a tune which used the riff from the classic "Insomnia" by Faithless. Kevin Energy was on in the hardcore arena at midnight and he also played a wicked set. Almost all of it was new, with the only tunes I'd heard before being the new "Crazy Styles" remix and "More fucked". The first 20 minutes of it was dark, driving freeform and then towards the end it got more uplifting, showing that there is a lot to look forward to from the Nu Energy stable. I then headed into the North trance room to see Chris Liberator, someone who I'd never seen before but had heard loads of good stuff about. He played an acid techno set which was fairly hard and had some really long rolling mixes in, so that at times you couldn't even tell he was mixing. He's a talented DJ and I'd love to see him play again sometime in the near future. I then stopped in the same room to see DJs UHF and Chris Toxic play back to back. These played a banging hard trance set with a hard and dirty kickdrum all the way through it. The dancefloor was almost empty at the start of the set and then full all the way through it, and the set could have come straight from M Zone himself. It was undoubtedly a good set, the highlight of which was when they dropped in "Hardcore will never die" by Warmduscher. What made this night one to remember was the set which came in the main hardcore room at 4, where I went next. This was Marc Smith accompanied on the mike by Sharkey, who was doing his last EVER MC set. The set started off with yet another twisted stage show involving a man and a woman. The man had small darts pierced through the skin on his forehead and the woman pulled them out one by one to draw blood, which then ran down his forehead in streaks. The man then pierced her forearms with darts and hung chains from them. They were on stage for about 15 minutes, leaving everyone open mouthed. Marc Smith played "Boom n Pow", "Oh no", "It's all just hardcore", "More fucked" and "Identify the Beat". As the end came for his final MC set Sharkey had tears in his eyes and he was clearly very moved by the whole thing. The noise for him at the end was deafening and he will be missed. :( The final set of the night was Sy and MC Storm. I saw the first half of this set and Sy played "Elysium +", along with plenty of scratching from the pair of them. I had planned to see the whole set but nipped out halfway through to get my coat. As I queued up to get it Nicky Blackmarket was rinsing out all the drum and bass classics in his old skool set along with Casper on the mike, so I had to stop in there till the end. He played "Champion Sound", "LK" (definitely not old skool but an absolute tune), "2 degrees" and "Warhead". That brought to an end a very good Future Dance event. I didn't go to Future Dance 6 but felt this was a better Bagleys event than numbers 7 and 8. The hardcore arena always seemed to be full, and the hard house room was busier than at Future Dance 8. The sound systems seemed much louder than they had been previously and all of the sets I saw were good. The best for me was Sharkey's last ever MC set with Marc Smith, as it had a real "I was there when...." kind of feel to it. There is one criticism I have of the night though and it is quite a big one. Lab 4 were on the original flyer in the hard house room but on the night they had been swapped for Phil Reynolds. This in itself is understandable as DJs cancel all the time, but the lineup had been changed on the Future Dance website for almost two months. This change was never mentioned on USH, and I received a newsletter two weeks before the event which made no mention of this either. Lab 4 are massive crowd pullers and there are many people who will go to an event purely for them, so much more of an effort should have been made to notify the ravers of this change before the event. Apart from this it was a very good night though, and the next Future Dance event is Future Vibe in conjunction with Vibealite, which is at the Sanctuary on August 31st. See you all there. :) Shouts go out to Lee UHF, Rich, Little Miss Hyper, Erica, Emma, Rich and Jo (good to see you both again), Andy Freestyle, Banksy, Kenno, Justin, Nick P, Cris E Manic, Uplift, Desire, Grob Le Frog, Voltage, Loony, Neotech, Astraboy, Ravegirl, Jodi Minxx, Little Miss Nails, Tamsie, Vicki, Potfish in his tucsido, Phick, Stix, Paul Compulsion, MDMA Si, Buzz, Gazy J, Ponder, Tom U4ea, Doc-E, Number 2301, Neil K, Rob Brownlee, Snow, Davespice, Alan, Dusty Vixen, Stormtrooper, Jensta, Sharkey, Energy, MC Whizzkid and MC Storm.
