Club Reviews - Hi-Fi South Dance Festival

Last Updated 05.06.06

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Hi-Fi South

Date: Saturday 27th & Sunday 28th May 2006
Address: The Bowl, Matterley Estate, Nr Winchester, Hampshire, SO24 0HY
Occurrence: Annual
Hours: 2pm - 4am
Ticket Price: W eekend camping tickets: £99 + booking fee
Genre: House, Techno, Trance, Breaks, Drum n Bass, Hard House… the list goes on!
Dress Code: Wellies!
Capacity: 35,000

Line-Up: www.hifisouth.com

The summer has officially arrived! The festival season has begun! What a weekend! HiFi South has taken over from Homelands as the first major UK dance festival of the year at the Matterley Bowl in Winchester, and now covers both Saturday and Sunday, with more or less any DJ you care to mention playing at some point over the two days. There was the main arena, where Mylo and Hard-Fi would play, the Godskitchen arena for all things trance, the Breaks arena, the Electric arena, a Drum ‘n’ Bass arena (hard house on Sunday) and a Hed-Kandi VIP tent. So to Saturday….and a bad start! No trains! Buses most of the way and the rain was so heavy on the way down it was ridiculous! Surprisingly though, the site wasn’t too mucky, then the rain went off and the sun even came out for a bit! I promise you that it did, I saw it! Many had clearly given this alot of thought beforehand, and the Welly boot brigade heavily outnumbered the furry boot brigade today! It’s not called the bowl for nothing. When you walk from the entrance you see it all below you, the site surrounded by hills, in the shape of … a bowl! Some of the tented arenas were odd shaped too, several on hills sloping towards the DJ booth! Uphill clubbing! Apparantly it was freaking some people out! The site was also quite a good size, not too big, making it easy to get between tents quickly. It was quite busy today but not packed out and firstly we saw Tiefschwarz banging out some minimal/techy house stuff in the Electric arena. Not usually my thing, but I thought he was excellent and could appreciate it. A little tip… if you want some attention on the dancefloor, then eat a banana! My mate did it and he was like a tourist attraction! Anyway, the first of many unavoidable conflict in times then arose; Mylo in the main tent, Armin Van Buuren in Godskitchen and Dave Clarke in the Electric arena. Marco V was just destroying the Gods tent before Armin came on, with his trademark banging tech trance. It was good to catch the end of his set, and it was a pity that we hadn’t seen more of it. How do you follow that I thought? Well, Armin drops a tune that very quickly went into this amazing breakdown that just blew me away. I promise you, I had goosebumps and I’ve seen these guys DJ dozens of time. What a moment! Good DJing I thought! Sadly for me, that was as good as it got and I was very disappointed with the trance. Trance is my first love, but I found it very predictable yesterday, the same with Ferry Corsten later. It goes a bit like this … mix… banging tune comes in…. unnecessary longwinded breakdown…builds again…gets a big cheer…repeat! We didn’t hang around too long, so it may be a bit unfair, as we never saw the full sets. It almost looked like many were dancing for the sake of it, like it was a real effort, with a lot of very serious faces! Not exactly overflowing with joy and happiness! Ok, rant over…for now. I think the majority of the crowd were in the main arena for Mylo; it was packed. I enjoyed it, and thought that he showed excellent variety in his set, mixing it up brilliantly, and Drop The Pressure was certainly a big moment! Over to Dave Clarke. Poor sod. There was about 20 people watching him, which is just the luck of the draw, nothing to do with his music or DJ skills. Hard-Fi were next up after Mylo, but I wasn’t exactly loving it. They were ok, no better or worse than that. Nothing special. Not much more to say on them really. We then took a wander up to the Hed Kandi VIP area. It’s VIP they say, but there are a lot of VIPs it seems! Nicer toilets though which is a big bonus, because the smell and the view in the normal ones…! Hed kandi is cool, it wasn’t that busy, but musically just what you’d expect. A nice place to go and chill out for a bit, and it was really funny seeing all the girls in the bizarre combination of what looked like designer wellies and the obligatory shades! Don’t know if Pacha will allow this new trend through their door! Now, the unexpected highlight of the day for me and by far the best DJ I saw today; Mr Eric Prydz in the Electric arena. For those who only know him by his huge Call On Me tune, well, his DJing couldn’t be any further removed from this! Pulsating throbbing tech and electro house, combined with just perfect mixing ability and great use of the Pioneer EFX 1000. I thought he was superb. The packed tent thought so too. Pete Tong followed on, and initially it was like a scene from It’s All Gone Pete Tong! Two laptops appeared plus god knows what else while Prydz was DJing. Half an hour later they were still at it! Engineer, Tong and even Inspector Gadget himself James Zabiela all lent a hand! Technical problems I think it’s called! It was funny I suppose, seeing the most influential man in dance standing with wires in his hand looking well puzzled long after his set had begun! It all got sorted out in the end though and he did a good job, with a nice mixture of tech and electro house. It was now 2am and the final sets for today. The Plump DJs were the main draw going by the number of people in the tents. It was excellent in there, a good atmosphere and very busy. The random dude who was just dripping with sweat on the stage was brilliant entertainment too, going through his own unique dance steps! Meanwhile, Zabiela was doing his thing, with effects unit etc. and Fergie was banging out his usual hard stuff in the Gods tent, but neither tent was really that busy. My legs were now “done in” and I wanted to go home! Well…let the fun begin! To cut a long story short, after a long wait and several trains, we got an unwelcome tour of the south coast and made it home for about 9am! At least the sun was shining! Maybe we should have camped. So it was off to bed for a few hours, then straight back down the road for day 2! The sun is shining, the wellys are off (well, mostly!) and we were verging towards fully recovered ready for another brilliant day. Layo and Bushwacka were almost finished when we eventually made it in to a tent, and it was really trippy in there. Later on we would also see Erol Alkan, playing this mental music! No idea what it was! Just crazy, banging, dark, pulsating beats I suppose! If yesterdays Godskitchen arena was slightly disappointing then today was the exact opposite. What a line up! Nicky Warren, Sander Kleinenberg, Paul Oakenfold, Sasha and Digweed and Carl Cox! How about that for a quiet Sunday afternoon! Pull me up a deckchair and let the show begin! Only caught the end of Kleinenberg, but already the tent was getting very busy, much more so than yesterday. I think there were more people here generally today. Now it was time for Oaky, and it was the best 90 minutes that I’ve had for ages, despite dropping my freshly prepared sandwiches on the ground; I did however, manage to rescue the Twix, the sausage roll and the all important yoghurt though! I wish some of the other trance DJs had been there to witness this set, as they would have seen a master at work and how to entertain a crowd. This was driving progressive and tech trance, which had everybody constantly on the move, no unnecessary breakdowns and we felt excitement and joy! For the first time, the Gods crowd were spontaneously jumping up and down with a smile on their faces! It was refreshing and restored my faith in my beloved trance! Emjay’s Real High must be due for a release soon on Perfecto; is there a finer trance tune around? I believe that the Audio Bully’s were due on after Oaky and I wondered how on earth they were gonna follow that, but they cancelled and we got more trance instead! Not sure who took over, nobody seemed to know, but I heard the name James Aldgate get mentioned? Anyway, there were two of them and they opened with a remix of Radiohead’s Street Spirit; good choice! It actually worked out very well as they provided an ideal warm up for Digweed and Sasha. Eric Morillo was doing a three hour set over in the electric arena so had to go and see him too. I’d never seen Morillo before and watched as the tent lapped up his tribal and tech house. Should also mention the brilliant remix or two of Inner City’s classic Good Life that we kept hearing. Top stuff! No time to linger in the one place though, as Ian Brown was in the main arena. We caught the last half hour, and what we saw was very good. Everyone was delighted to hear Made of Stone and I Am The Resurrection from his Stone Roses days and he closed with F.E.A.R., another very popular tune. We were slightly disappointed that no encore followed, as everyone was waiting after the band made a hurried exit. Nevermind… Back in the Gods tent, John Digweed was on. This was deep, dark, rolling progressive house; very underground. We loved it, and he continued for a bit before Sasha took over. They were on for 3 hours and eventually they went back to back; well kind of! Not exactly sure what they were doing but Sasha had his laptop and Digweed was doing something at the same time, not back to back in the traditional sense of the word! Really driving progressive house and they were enjoying themselves too; even saw Sasha jump and down several times, and almost break into a smile! This was exceptional, really top drawer stuff. It was a privilege to see them at work, almost every tune they played was being remixed there and then! If this is what you can do with Ableton Live then bring it on! After a brief exit to see Steve Lawler who was also playing progressive stuff in the electric tent, we got back in time for Carl Cox. We saw him at Global last year where he was superb and likewise tonight. He goes on the mic now and again which is almost unheard of for a huge DJ, but he’s very good at it. It was two hours of relentless banging techno, with the large Gods tent very busy. He cranked the volume up as soon as he went on, with a big grin on his face and the crowd responded. If you’re looking for someone to close a festival in style then Cox is the man to do it, and he’s still fond of the odd spin back or two! Should also mention the wicked visuals in the Gods tent; two giant screens with all kinds of crazy psychedelic stuff getting projected out, which I love. However, the lights could have been better throughout the festival, not in the same class as those at Global, with the brilliant green laser under used. So, the two days had come and gone very quickly it seemed, almost being morphed into one long joyous day. For us, Sunday was better than Saturday, it just seemed to have a “bigger” atmosphere, and some really high profile brilliant DJ performances; I think it was busier too. Overall, we loved it, festivals are just the best idea! You get all these great DJs together at the one time and a really friendly crowd with all sorts of madness going on! Roll on Global!
Venue: 9 Music: 9 Crowd: 9 Sound System: 8 Total: 35 / 40 Rating: Gold Award
Review written by: Kevin Boyle	kevin@uk-cl.co.uk