The series of imported DJs by Pico Productions and Vibe Lebanon started last night with cypriot DJ Tempa taking on the decks @ BO18. Tempa already performed in Lebanon once (Crasher @ Monot), so the Lebanese crowd wasn't a complete stranger to him.
I arrived at BO18 at about 1:30AM. Typical BO18 music was being played: Progressive & Dark House. The crowd was also the typical BO18 crowd, i.e. no Hayfa/Nancy/Wassouf fans. Tempa took over at about 2:45AM (after being busy for a whole hour flirting with a delicious blondie) and played a set of Melodic & Vocal Trance. Here are some of the tracks that I still remember being played last night (as anybody who has ever been at a Trance gig with me knows that I would be dancing non-stop therefore it's really hard to keep track of the songs played):
Whirlpool ~ Under The Sun (Solar Stone Remix)
Push ~ The Legacy (Original Mix)
Kyau & Albert ~ Velvet Morning (Aalto Remix)
Smith & Pledger ~ Forever (Vocal Mix)
Sonorous ~ Protonic (Ronski Speed Remix)
Envio ~ Time To Say Goodbye (Passiva Remix)
Matt Hardwick + Smith & Pledger ~ Connected (Original Mix)
BT ~ Force Of Gravity (Airborne Remix)
Tempa maintained a real melodic spirit to his set for about and hour and half, then he switched to Uplifting, Hard, and Tech-Trance. I had to leave just then for certain reasons, so I don't really know how that went, but I'm sure Joe will fill me in on the details soon enough.
Time for DIONYSOS' infamous constructive criticism!
1) The place could've been better. Maybe it was good enough for Tempa as he is not really known worldwide, but I'm having a hard time imagining Marco V, Johan Gielen, or Scott Bond spinning for a crowd of 100-200 people.
2) Sound quality was good, but not powerful - we couldn't feel the bass.
3) Tempa has good taste in the tracks he chose, but he doesn't know how to fit them all together; i.e. he doesn't know what to mix with what. In addition to him having average mixing skills - not bad at all, but not impressive either.
All in all, I think it is a really good gesture that BO18 is doing by occasionly shifting from their routine House ambiance into a more trancy one. Next events coming up are Marco V on the 16th of July, Matt Hardwick on the 22nd, and 3 big DJs in August: Johan Gielen, Scott Bond, and Michael Woods.
TranceHits.com members present at BO18 last night were: DIONYSOS, Psychadelic Cowboy (Joe, and his trancy friends), Pibito, and Misstress B.