Myself and my friends Steve, Sarah, Andy, Smithy and Ginge all caught the train from our home town of Farnborough in Hampshire up to Waterloo. Once we got to London bridge and into St Thomas street, we queued for about 15 minutes and it was nice to see the clockwork guards man about. Unfortunately some sad drum n bass rude boys didn't see the funny side of this and persisted to shout abuse at him from down the queue (TWATS). First place we headed was the hardcore room. HARDCORE ARENA First up was TWO'2COMPANY who played a good hard set and all my mates said how good they were. When i first walked into this room i though the sound was really quite and apart from that the 30 or so people in there were having it anyway. We stayed for most of there set but then ventured into the other rooms and check the set up out. OLD SKOOL ARENA Once again a nice set up, but i found this raindance to have quite a simple set up and have seen it busier as well. Once into this arena we saw DJ RIPPLE who played some proper old skool mostly from around 91-92, so i didn't recognise a lot of the stuff. But the vibe was good and so were the tunes so who gives a f**k. JENKINS LANE RE-UNION ARCH Didn't really spend much time in here at all, but then again from what i heard the tunes were top notch real acid house style. In this room they had the Epidemik merchandise stall and some seating in the middle of the arena and a bar at one end opposite the dj booth. DRUM & BASS / JUNGLE ARENA Didn't really spend anytime in here at all only to walk through to the chill out and Pussina arena. What i did notice that it was really dark in here and the only lights i saw was the two green lasers either side of the stage. The sound was nice and loud and you could feel the bass. Once again Raindance have opted for the talk less in here so that’s less mc's, less rude boys all pretending to be Skibadee. But as usual there were some rude boy attitudes about. but i didn’t see any trouble. One bloke made me laugh in there as everytime i walked through, he kept hugging me shouting your going down with the Millwall (i was wearing a West Ham shirt, and yes i can already here the laughs). PUSSINA EUPHORIC HOUSE & TRANCE ARENA I did like this room, loads of places to sit and relax, all my mates are mostly into house and trance. But after experiencing some hardcore, they were complaining how slow the music was and that they couldn't dance to it so they said lets go back to the HARDCORE ROOM.(pukka) Once back in the hardcore room it was CRIS E MANIC she started her set off with what sounded like some thing off Raverbaby. But that didn't last long and it was back to some f**king pounding hardcore, nice, hard and fast. One thing about this girl she doesn't disappoint. She was on the decks for two hours as STORM & HERMAN and DICE & REALITY didn't play. After CHRISSY came the godfather, SLIPMATT who was about 20 mins late. MR SLIPMATT played some proper old classics starting with breakbeat hardcore such as "TAKE ME AWAY" and then into 4-BEAT like "NOW IS THE TIME" and finishing with the all time classic "HEART OF GOLD". SLIPMATT got a really good reception from the crowd and everytime he dropped a classic tune the crowd let him know. After SLIPMATT came head of the NU ENERGY collective MR KEVIN ENERGY, energy played some shit hot freeform hardcore and did some bad ass scratching with his set as well. On the mic he was joined by WHIZZKID, but you really couldn't hear the mc's that well. Half way through energy's set we decided to go and check out some old skool as it was time for the RAT PACK. They started off with a new remix of "SWEET HARMONY". i really wasn't paying any attention to the Rat Pack as next to me some bloke had collapsed. The security were there quite quick and the paramedic was there as well. Anyway i'd had enough of the old skool so went back into the hardcore room to see SY play "LIBERATION" by C.S.L.M. I know its got the vocals of jamie from hollyoaks, but its still a bad tune. After SY came UPLIFT who just got straight on with some fast and hard, banging stuff that i really didn't know but danced anyway. At this point the whole night started to get blurry and all i know is that LUKOZADE came after UPLIFT. One thing i did notice was that there was no LASER in the hardcore room and it never seemed to get full which was disappointing but that at least was a good thing as it didn't get to hot in there. Once again though it was a good party and the part of TWO'2COMPANY wearing the red top is fit , sorry just thought i'd add that. I will definitely be at the next one. And did anyone pick up a flyer for RAVENATION, RESONANCE and USH.NET's OLD SKOOL & HARDCORE CARNIVAL @ THE LONDON LIGHTHOUSE on 22ND AUGUST. This will be a good event so hopefully i can get a load of people down there as well.
