Heat Evolution: looking back over the years
Reported by benz
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Submitted 17-11-05 23:36
The hard dance classics night with a twist finally returns this Saturday at Koko for a trip down memory lane with some of the world’s finest hard DJs and producers. The event covers the years 1995 to 2001, with a different DJ representing a different year. So we got all these legendary DJs together to tell us their memories of their designated year, with promoter of Heat Damian giving us an account of his journey towards promoting one of the biggest dance music events in the country.
We present the Evolution cast: Marc French — resident and big cheese at HeatUK, and a big name on the hard trance scene. Pete Wardman — one of the forefathers of what we now call hard house, still rocking it and relevant in 2005. Spencer Freeland — original Frantic resident and one of the most popular DJs to ever have been on the hard dance scene. Ian Betts — HeatUK Resident and now global trance phenomenon. Organ Donors — some of the finest, most innovative producers in hard dance with an explosive live show to boot. Billy ‘Daniel’ Bunter and Jon Doe hard music pioneers who brought us the term hard dance and dozens of forward-thinking dancefloor bombs. BK — the most prolific and important hard dance producer around. And last but not least, Technikal — the production whizzkid who is the future of hard dance!
1995
Marc French: For those of you who were around the London club circuit in the year of 1995, you may be interested on what I have to offer for the opening set at Evolution this weekend. After getting tanked up at the meet up I shall be setting the pace in the main room with a diverse array of all things pumping from a decade ago, my years of Club UK and Trade, favourite haunts of mine at the time. Those young whippersnappers who weren’t around back then can stand and point and laugh at the quality of production!
Tracks that may well be heard in this one and a half hour opening set:
Discuss — ‘Save the Day’
Tall Paul’s mix of Rozzo — ‘Into the Heart’
Mr & Mrs Smith — ‘Gotta Get Loose’
‘Innerspace’ — by someone who I can’t remember
Sultana — ‘Te Amo’ (OK its older than ‘95 but its one of my all time favourites and I want to play it OK?)
Jens — Original ‘Loops and Tings’ (again older but I don’t care!)
Elevator — ‘Shinny’
Antic — ‘The Ultimate’
‘Chakaboom Bang’ (or something like that) on Hooj
Peppermint Lounge — ‘Lemon Project’
1996
Pete Wardman: That sort of time, 95–97, was a very exciting time for various reasons. The music was evolving at a breakneck pace. It was getting to the point where hard house was a known genre/entity, and it was hugely exciting and original. It was a real backlash to the softer handbag sound. I was finding that I was more and more able to play the harder end of scale at even the most mainstream venues. For example, ClubUK, I would play the last set of Saturday night from 4 til 6am playing close to 160bpm. The crowd were glued to the floor. There was no drop-off of going home early. Witnessing that time was extremely exciting, and it gave me the first indications that this music is was going somewhere and was going to be around for a long time.
1997
Spencer Freeland: Evolution… imagine 7 years of your best clubbing moments compressed into one night. Brilliant! I’m literally just ploughing through all my old tracks right now to pick out stuff for Saturday night, so not sure what I’ll be playing exactly. But don’t be surprised if you hear Wippenberg’s classic ‘Neurodancer’!
Damian: I was living in a backpacker house in East London with 14 other travellers. This is the point I met my HeatUK business partner Anton Marmot. At this point I had been in London for 3 years and still never been to a club. I missed all of the Trade and Sunnyside Up years. Evolution is one of those rare events that allows us to revisit these years.
1998
Ian Betts: — ’98 was a special year for me as it’s the year that I made my DJing debut playing in a basement underneath a Mexican restaurant in Old Street, and it was also the year I started running a party called Sleepless at a venue on Grays Inn Road (it’s now a lap dancing club!) so I’ve personally got some very good memories from that time. I’ll also be spoiled for choice with tracks to play as it was a great year for trance — ‘Binary Finary’, ‘For An Angel’, ‘Communication’, ‘Wizards Of The Sonic’, ‘Madagascar’...
1999
Organ Donors: — 1999 was a defining year for us, I dropped out of college where I was studying sound engineering to set up our studio with my brother and 2 friends. I learnt more in the first month in our studio than I did in a year at college. It was great to finally have the freedom to write music all day and night and not have to pay ridiculous studio hire prices. We also held a residency at a great little venue called the Country Club which back then was the only weekly all-nighter in the south west, Let’s just say they were some messy days! Trance was really finding its feet with huge tunes such as, System F’s ‘Out of the Blue’, Mauro Picotto's ‘Lizard’ and some great crossover tunes such as Timo Maas’ tech monster, ‘Der Schieber’. Lables such as Bonzai, Neo, Data and Hooj Tunes were leading the way. Great times and can’t wait to relive some magical memories!
Damian: My first clubbing experience in London. It took me 5 years to actually experience a club/rave environment, before that I was only interested in bands and a rock ‘n’ roll environment. This occurred when Anton took me to The Fridge on a Friday night for one of the Escape From Samsara events. This was also the year I first went to Frantic at the Rocket. Clubbing became a regular weekend activity. This same year I left London and bought the lease on a bar on the Greek Island of Mykonos and worked the summer. It was here I first saw Carl Cox play a seven hour set. I was never to know I would be booking the big guy for a 20,000 person event on Clapham Common 6 years later.
2000
Jon Doe: I have a really bad memory! Year 2000 was amazing. I had escaped the grip of the evil Alpha Magic and was working for all sorts of people. D 2,3 and 4 came out. I remixed ‘Lord of the Universe’ for Eve's new Recover label, they had 6 remixes all commisioned at once and took my one as release 1, which was really cool. Tidy Trax did their Milked series and I did M5. It was a really fast and fun year, I got to choose what tracks I remixed from label’s back cats, Judge Jules cained the limited NRG mix and towards the end of the year I remixed ‘7 Colours’ by Lost Witness for Ministry. Things had gone mad.
Damian: I returned to Australia and tried to live in Sydney but the club culture was not like anything I had experienced in the UK. By the end of the year I decided to return and live in London and frequent promotions like Frantic, Pendragon, Fevah, XLR8 and Solid Sunday.
2001
BK: A bit of a blur to be fair. It was a crazy year, I was working flat out seven days a week — the studio in the week and gigging at the weekend. It was also a very exciting time in music lots of new directions and styles. It was the era hard house moved out of clubs like Trade and spread across the world. Playing at Trade’s birthday that year is one of my best and most messy memories.
Damian: Our first crack at organising an event was in 2001 — it was simply a backyard party in Walthamstow East London. The first official HeatUK event for the public was on a Saturday afternoon in September at the legendary Rock club in Embankment.
2005 and Beyond
Technikal: This year I believe hard dance has taken a step back into the underground, which has allowed producers to try many new production techniques and draw influences from genres never considered before. Psy trance has been a huge influence on the hard dance sounds, especially in my more recent productions this year. I think in the new few years when hard dance re-emerges from the underground it will have an entirely new face.
Heat Evolution: Khemical Imbalance offers the complete package. A history lesson of the first 7 years of hard dance music in the main room, as well as a tour-de-force of hot new talent in room 2, with the likes of Technikal, MDA & Spherical and Ali Wilson leading the charge to show that hard dance is anything but dead. You won’t often get the chance to hear true legends of the scene take you as far back as 1995, all the while being able to hear the most upfront sounds courtesy of these young production superstars. Evolution gives you the best of both worlds!
Flyer images by some bloke called Marc French.
HeatUK EVOLUTION:THE KHEMICAL IMBALANCE
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On:
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Saturday 19th November 2005
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At:
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KOKO [map]
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From:
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10pm-6am
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Cost:
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£14 Concs GL guest@heatuk.com / Tickets £14 / £16 /£18 / Door £22
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Website:
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www.heatuk.com
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Ticket Info:
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24 hour Credit Card Hotline 08700 600 100
www.ticketweb.co.uk or www.heatuk.com
www.clubtickets.co.uk 08717 110 010 (buy 5 get one free!!)
Outlets: Mad Records (Soho) 020 7439 0707
Cyberdog (Camden) 020 7482 2842
Ticket Agent: Maria 07813 684399
Vince (Midlands) 07835 626226
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Buy Online:
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Click here to buy tickets
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More:
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Tonight Evolution goes even further back starting with ten year old club classics and finishing the year of HeatUK’s inception. There can be no better nostalgia than this and with no better line-up! While the main arena of the former Camden Palace revisits rare anthems a year at a time with the masters at work – Room 2 previews future sounds from the most talented group of producers making waves on the scene today. This is the nu-blood of the scene providing tomorrow’s classics on MP3’s with the 19 year old genius Technikal leading the charge. The future is in very good hands.
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Flyer:
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The views and opinions expressed in this review are strictly those of the author only for which HarderFaster will not be held responsible or liable.
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Hope to see you all at Evolution this Saturday.
Gonna be my first