Dizstruxshon is a long running event which alternates between here and Scunthorpe, and the event celebrated its ten year anniversary last year. I'd never been to any Dizstruxshon event or this venue before, although I had heard a lot about it, so I was eager to see how the night would turn out. The Dome is located in a leisure park on the outskirts on Doncaster, it is not near the centre of the town. There is a car park outside the venue, and then lots more parking spaces in the ASDA opposite. The event started at 9pm and I arrived here at about 9:45. There was no queue outside so I got to the entrance quickly, and I was only given a very brief search by the security. Getting to the entrance involves going up a flight of stairs from the car park outside, so entry to the venue is on the first floor level. In truth I hadn't realized before just how big this venue actually is. It has three different arenas and the capacity is over 4000 people. Coming into the venue leads straight into arena three, which is a bar room. This was fully lit with seats in, DJs playing funky house and there was even a TV showing football matches on Sky Sports. This room is much smaller than the other two arenas, which are both located downstairs on the ground floor level. The Industry hard trance arena is the bigger of the two, and this room is completely circular with a balcony all round the top. It is this arena that gives the venue it's name, as it is a Dome shape with pillars and a high ceiling. At the front of this arena is a stage for the DJ and people to dance on, as well as a few Industry banners. For most of the night this arena had no MCs, and when it did the MCing was much more minimal than in the hardcore arena. The problem this arena had though was that the sound tended to echo off the walls somewhat, although this seemed to be more of a problem at the back of the arena than at the front. The hardcore arena was a large rectangular warehouse style room with a stage at the front and the entrance at the back of the room. The production in the Industry arena was fairly good with lasers, but it was in here where the production really stood out. On the stage were banners which were painted to make it look like the front of an old Roman temple, then either side of the stage were video projection screens. On each side of the DJ box were three television monitors with visual displays, and behind the decks was a powerful green laser with lots of different patterns. There was a row of strobes at the top of the stage, and room for a dancer on each side of it. These included people spinning glowing balls around on chains and fire performers who generated large streams of sparks by running a spinning metal disc against a plate on their stomachs. The sound system in here was easily loud enough, and the same applied to the other two arenas. The hardcore arena was the busiest of the three arenas on the night, especially near the front of it. In fact as the arena only had one entrance to it at the back this leads to bad crowd blocking there at one point in the night, as the movement of people in and out of there was so great. The first set I saw was someone called DJ Kurt in the hardcore arena, and as he wasn't on the flyer this suggested that someone now wasn't coming, although at that point I didn't know who. He played a good set of relatively new hardcore including "Commence", "Black Magic Bad Magic", the hardcore rip of "Silence" by Delerium, the "Turn up the Music" remix and "Like an Angel", as well as some scratching over the top. The MCs on the night were all the regular Yorkshire ones such as Natz, Space etc, and while these aren't to many people's tastes they are popular with the crowd here. Next up came Hixxy and he started off with the new remix that merges "You're Shining" and "Future Set" together. He then went on to play the new remixes of "Pretty Green Eyes" and "Can't Stop Raving", his remixes of "Set You Free" and "Wonderful Days" and new rips of "The Way" by Divine Inspiration and "Xray (Follow Me)" by Spacefrog. After him at midnight was Kevin Energy who played a hard freeform set with lots of new stuff in. This started off with "I Had a Dream" by Two2 Company, then he played the new "Pilgrim" remix, "Party Zone", "The Deviant" by Marc Smith and "Technorocker". The lineup had somewhat bizarrely put Mark EG and M Zone on at the same time in different rooms for the next hour, so I headed into the Industry arena to see M Zone play. He played a hardstyle set which included a tune from the Analogic Disturbance EP, and after an hour the arena was much more full than when he started. At 2am I went back into the hardcore arena hoping to see Sy play, but when I saw it was Uprising promoter Topgroove behind the decks I realized that it was Sy who wasn't turning up. I then headed back into the Industry arena to see M Zone play the second half of his two hour set. This was much harder than the first half, and he finished off with the big local tune "Piano in Trance", and a bouncy hardcore version of the "2001 Space Odyssey" theme. M Zone managed to squeeze in about five minutes over the 3am finish but then it was time to go. :( I was impressed by this rave and I have to say that I'd underestimated the size of it beforehand. This is a big rave at a big venue, in fact at the moment it's probably the biggest rave in the north. The production was very good, especially in the hardcore room, and the turnout was pretty high. The crowd was very much a local one and I recognized quite a few faces from Uprising in Sheffield. The music was good, although I thought the MCs in the hardcore arena were a bit over the top, and the best set I saw was Kevin Energy. Dizstruxshon is known by some people as attracting a lot of gypsies who cause trouble, and I admit I was a little wary of this before I went here. On the night I didn't see or hear of any trouble though and the atmosphere was good, so I think this label is a bit unfounded. It's certainly no worse than any isolated trouble you might get at say the Sanctuary in Milton Keynes. The main criticism I have of the night is the 3am finish, as a big rave like this really should go on all night. The other was that there was no food on sale here (hot or cold), so by 2am I was starving. Overall though this is a quality rave on a large scale, and I wish I'd come here before now. The next Dizstruxshon event is at The Baths Hall in Scunthorpe on Sat April 19th. Shouts to Lee UHF, Andy Freestyle, Jake Nicholls and Sam, John D:Stroy, Milligan, Hirsti, Linz, Hixxy and Kevin Energy.
