I will enumerate my ideas instead of using a narrative style, it's clearer.
It is neither easy nor fair to make a review of one DJ's performance when you are yourself an extremely devoted fan of another DJ. It becomes even more difficult to do so when your ears have relatively lower tolerance to music other than Trance music (and its subfields).
Having said that, here are my points.
1- I was not expecting Trance music from Paul Van Dyk (his latest live sets were geared towards tech house and progressive house), therefore I was not disappointed during that night. This is where PVD differs from the likes of Ferry, Armin, Tiesto and other Trance DJs.
2- PVD read the crowd and the scene brilliantly with his ear-damaging continuous beats.
3- The sound was excellent, well-distributed. The light system was less supportive. It was intended to make the scene look darker, which faciliated PVD's selection of dark progressive house (that's what I meant by "he read the scene"). With this light system, there was no room for dynamic white Trance (with a few exceptions of course). One could feel part of an IDT Sensation event "Dark" (not White). The Saruman-style glass above the crowd was nice, the lazer beam was necessary too. But with the amount of money flowing to the organizers (not necessarily to Mix FM), there could have been more than one lazer machine. (do the maths guys)
4- Many posters in this body wrote that PVD is/could be energetic and claimed that all accustaions of him being static during his performance were unfolded. Well, either I couldn't see him much that night or he failed miserably to abandon his robot figure while mixing. PVD's german-style mechanistic approach to DJing is simply---- PVD. Come on PVD, at least one jump!
5- I was never moved during that night, I was certainly dancing to PVD's set but I didn't experience a journey, the set was emotionless (except for Crush Vandit mix).
6- I will take all the necessary beating for this point, but it was extremely blissful to dance to Mojado featuring Mr. Sam - Naranja (Dimitri Andreas Vision), it was splendid because I felt like Tiesto was playing it, just like when he did during his concert. (be easy on me please, I know I am hopeless, I am eternally grateful to Tiesto)
7- Crush was nice, in addition to one Trance tune PVD played (I couldn't recognize it)
8- Contrary to conventional wisdom, Amadeus's set did not complement PVD's, it harmonized it and made it look better. The warm up was really well performed. As for the post-PVD interval, Amadeus deserved to be crowned. Amadeus, you out-performed PVD, selection wise and interaction with the crowd. Masterful!
Finally, no disappointments, I was expecting a cold set from one of the coldest DJs out there.
Please don't forget that I am over-biased in favor of Trance music in general and Tiesto in particular.
Regardless of my subjective comments, Lebanon is no longer the place it used to be, this is the essence of the story!
To witness 3000 (?) people gathered in one electronic music scene is simply outstanding. Who said Israel is the only Trance-tolerant country in the Middle East!
