Ever since they had to leave SEOne last year Raindance have been doing events at a few different venues and this was their first one at the well established rave venue of Bagleys. It was advertised using the same “Indoor Rave Festival” tag used at their Drome events and so it was hoped this could be a return to those great events. I arrived at Bagleys at about 10:15, 15 minutes after the scheduled start time. By Bagleys standards there didn’t seem to be much of a queue outside, and as I had a credit card booking I joined the separate credit card and guestlist queue. To entertain the ravers as they were queuing up Raindance had provided two street performers who were on stilts and were wearing mad clothes. These did some juggling and gave away free glowing smiley faces to keep everyone smiling as they queued up. The security kept the queue moving well and had got everyone through in a pretty quick time. There were some new security faces on the night and the bloke who searched me was reasonably friendly although a few of them seemed quite surly. I was given a fairly thorough search and I headed into the Bagleys complex. This was a Bagleys event with a difference because Raindance had chosen to use the courtyard where the searches are normally done as an extra outdoor chillout area with free dodgems and a big hot food van. They also had an extra 6th arena in use next to the dodgems which was the Pussina house arena, as opposed to the 5 arenas that are usually used at Bagleys. Here arena 1 was the old skool arena, arena 2 was drum and bass, hardcore was in arena 3 where the cloakroom is, arena 4 with the long bar and low ceiling was the Jenkins Lane reunion arena, and the bunker arena downstairs was hosted by Tasty. The décor in all the arenas was good and the sound systems were all loud enough. One nice touch they put on was to have numerous “rave monkeys” walking through the crowd to liven up the arenas. The first arena I went into was the hardcore and it was Nemesis doing the first set. He did a decent set with quite bouncy and newish stuff including “Wipeaway”, “Technorocker” by Kaos and Ethos, “The Bastard” and one of the new “Gonna Get Ya” remixes. He even took the mike for a quick spot of MC-ing at the end. Following him came Elation’s HB with a quite breakbeat-orientated stuff. Most of it was new tunes I hadn’t heard before and he was accompanied by MC Elmo. From looking at the flyer beforehand, the set that looked the most interesting was Two’2 company who were a pair of identical female twins playing a back to back set. They did a fairly good set which was quite hard and contained some new stuff, but there was one cringe-worthy moment when one of them took the needle off the wrong record after it had mixed in. Doh! It was now just after midnight and it was about this time that the night really got going. I went for a wander into the drum and bass arena where Filthy Dirty Rich was playing and I loved his set. He was playing the classic “Turbulence” as I walked in and he also dropped “2 Degrees” by TNT (my favourite drum and bass tune EVER) and a new cut and paste remix of “Ska” by Zinc. The atmosphere in there was brilliant with absolutely no glaring rudeboys and everyone was brocking out hard. The stunningly funky stage dancers “The Narni Shakas” were there too although I wasn’t in the arena when they were actually dancing. It was then back into the hardcore to see Kevin Energy on the decks alongside MC Storm. He did a wicked set which was a mixture of older freeform classics like “Now Control” and “Ultraworld 5” alongside new tunes “Wanna be a DJ” and “Get Rockin”. He also played the instrumental version of “Sound Assassin” and had with him Vinny who was firing party popper guns into the crowd from behind the decks. I didn’t really catch much of the next hardcore set which was Kaos, although in the bits I did catch he was playing even harder and faster than Kevin Energy was. The next set I saw was Jon Doe playing a hard trance set in the downstairs Tasty room. He dropped in some massive tunes like “Can U Dig It” and the Scot Project mix of “City to City”, as well as the Freak remix of Paul Maddox’s “Tension”, “Kathy’s Song” and his own “Warehouse” which he finished off with. The DJ booth in there is at floor level so he was really getting involved and interacting with all the ravers, as any good DJ should do. I then went back into the drum and bass arena where Devious D was playing. The room was almost full at this point (it was pretty busy from midnight onwards) and I really enjoyed this set. He played Shy FX’s new “Don’t wanna know”, the anthem “Original Nutta” and “The Nine” by )EIB( . Nicky Blackmarket followed him to play the final set of the night in that arena, and he also played “Don’t wanna know” as well as “Triton’s Universe” by )EIB( . I was alternating between that and the final set in the hardcore which was Hixxy, so I only caught parts of Hixxy’s set, which included some new stuff, a tune using the riff from “Stay” by Sash and he finished off with his new “Set You Free” remix. This was one of those nights that was so good it just flew by and I couldn’t believe it when 6am arrived. The DJ lineup wasn’t full of big names and featured much more up and coming DJs than the majority of raves do, because that’s the way Raindance do their events. People come here for the atmosphere because they know it will be really friendly, which this event most certainly was. I didn’t see any attitude all night, not even in the drum and bass arena where there is usually a little bit. The musical variety on the night was great with the 6 arenas they had, and I thought the free dodgems were a nice touch. The décor and production was good on the whole, although the one criticism I will make is that the DJ setup in the hardcore arena was pretty poor. The monitors were nowhere near loud enough and every DJ I saw in there clanged some of their mixes, even Kevin Energy who is the best hardcore mixer there is. I thought that he played the best set of the night although Jon Doe and Devious D did very good sets too. More than anything this event reminded me of the Bagleys events Slammin Vinyl used to put on back in 98, before the garage came in and Bagleys acquired it’s “moody” reputation. This was a quality night and I will definitely be at the next one. Shouts to James and Charlie, HB, Sweetstar, Ponder, Erica, Wotsee, Astraboy, dj-ti, Scottie, Tombola, Elmo, Potfish, Marshy, Tenz, Cris E Manic, Desire, Uplift, Lukozade, Tom u4ea, Karen, Caine, Nitr8, Snort, Grob Le Frog, 1N the mystery girl, Hixxy, Kevin Energy, MC Whizzkid, MC Storm and Sarah.
