- Event Date: 29 November 2002.
Line-up: Ferry corsten and Armin Van Buuren.
Hearing the news that Armin Van Buuren and Ferry Corsten were to be playing at Heaven in London for a joint total of six hours it was more than enough to get us excited.
So off we went, on our way to the Charring Cross tube station in central London in order to find our way to the well famous Heaven nightclub (mainly for its gay club nights), but it is constantly used by various big club names like that of Bedrock and holds Gatecrasher’s monthly London event. The club itself is a great venue, not overly huge but fits a solid few hundred people and is the perfect canvas for huge sound and lighting setups. The main room is like a mini hanger with high ceilings and loads of exits/entrances onto the dance-floor.
And of course, as per the standard of Gatecrasher, there was a massive round visual screen for loads of various projected Gatecrasher and visual goodness. By the time the doors opened at 10 the queue was starting to build and 11pm saw a fairly length queue of people without pre-sold tickets. The result a full club, but thankfully it was not crammed. There was plenty of room to move and the music…. well it was just epic.
Nick Riley was on the warm-up duties on the night, and with 3 hours to play with he began with some nice pumping beats. He put down some big cheesy club tunes and got the crowd on their feet in preparation for the set Ferry Corsten was shortly to provide.
As parts of the crowd spotted Ferry take up to the stage the real excitement of the night began, the chanting and various screams were being thrown and it was time for the first (on the night) master of trance to take over. After a few warm up tracks he got down to business and handed out some amazing trance. But there was something special about this night …an epic vibe was brewing. Armin Van Buuren was soon to take to the stage and this did nothing but fuel the excitement in the air. Ferry continued to lay down some huge trance numbers, soon to reach his 3 hours but Armin was late for his 3:00am start (apparently as he was slightly delayed coming in from Brighton). But no one cared, the music was just amazing. Punk was dropped and of course the crowd went nuts, singing to the melody. And it was at about 3:30am that Armin took over…
He of course layed down his style of trance that has pushed him all the way to the #5 spot on this years DJ Mag Top 100 ranking and the crowd was more than up for it. He dropped some epic tracks like that of his remix of Seven Cities by Solar Stone. But this night was far from over, the epic feel had been building for hours and part way through the set that Armin was driving upon the still fairly full dance-floor (now, well after 4am) Ferry jumped back on the decks to spin just one last track. His, under the Gouyella moniker, monster ‘Tenshi’ release that absolutely tore the house down. Talk about goose-bumps!
Armin continued to play some amazing uplifting trance - loads of huge anthems and unknown epic tunes that had the whole place reaching for the lasers. The crowd still stood strong, unable to leave the grasp of these 2 trance providing god’s and it wasn’t until the last encore at around 6:30am that the sound died and the crowd forced on their way out.
Night’s like this don’t come each week, or month, but when the DJ’s are in the right frame of mind and having fun and the crowd is up for it and venue does it job, things just all end up perfectly. This event had a fairly intimate (yet sizable) atmosphere and the pair, who are two of Netherlands best trance purveyors, performed amazingly together. With the boys artist management, David Lewis in particular, and a few other friends and producers like Kid Vicious lurking about Ferry and Armin were both massively enjoying their time and this came out in the night that was provided.
Overall an amazing night with an absolutely electric atmosphere… will trance ever fade? …lets hope not!