|
|
 |
| Euphoria 2004 |
Date:
Saturday
9th October 04
Address: Padang Field, Singapore
Occurrence: TBC
Hours: TBC
Ticket Price: TBC
Genre: Various
Dress Code: Anything goes
Capacity: 25,000 |
A sports ground the
size of 2 football pitches. 25,000+ people; mostly
teenagers. Premium lager on tap and a flawless day.
And acts flown in from all four corners of the globe.
Sounds like your typical huge British live music
event, doesn’t it? And there you would be
mistaken. Because this is Singapore and nothing
(and I mean nothing) is what it seems in Singapore.
This was the Tiger Beer branded event, Euphoria
’04. From the moment the British hard dance
duo, Zetan Spore, rose through the stage via very
crafty understage hydraulics…well, this was
going to be something no one in Singapore had seen
before. Euphoria 04 was the first event of its kind
in Singapore. This was not only the largest outdoor
event in Singapore’s history…it was
also the first.
Headlining act Zetan Spore was always going to be
in interesting choice. Dance music was illegal until
very, very recently. That went for commercial dance
as well as the hard dance sounds of Zetan Spore,
those clever tricksters who fuse Psy trance, progressive
house, hard dance and tribal sounds. So the majority
of popsters had never heard the likes of it before.
However, the festival’s organisers were most
keen to get them out there.
Singaporeans are renowned for being conservative,
well mannered and polite. At fist, the audience
wasn’t quite sure what to make of this duo
who looked like they had just stepped off the set
of the latest Matrix movie set. It was amazing to
see their reaction’s within the first 15 minutes
of Zetan Spore’s 2 hour set. The audience
went from “Are we still on planet Earth”
to “This is kind of cool” to absolute
mayhem. Mayhem was helped along with some absolute
cheekiness from Mark and Ian Hasdell from Zetan
Spore – helped in large measures by throwing
cups of lager off the stage (which apparently breaks
about 5 different laws in Singapore). That was it,
the crowd was theirs. The glow sticks almost became
lethal weapons and 25,000+ people just did their
thing to the music – and did it energetically.
Ian Hasdell did his usual hallmark wizardry on the
desk with twin brother Mark Hasdell giving it his
all on guitar and didgeridoo. After a two hour live
set, they left the stage with the audience wanting
more.
Not content with wining over the Singapore crowd,
Ian and Mark’s humour won the press and television
journalists over from the word go...so much so these
newcomers nearly stole the press conference limelight.
Following swiftly on the heels of a premier performance
supporting Eat Static at “Future Sounds of
Exeter” earlier in October and two major live
coast-to-coast radio broadcasts in America; Euphoria
04 hallmarks Zetan Spore’s emergence as a
major dance act hailing from Britain’s much-overlooked
Southwest.
The act’s record label, Aardvark Records,
is currently negotiating tours for North America,
South America, Australia and New Zealand. |
Venue: ?
Music: ?
Crowd: ?
Sound System: ?
Total: / 40
Rating: ??? |
| Review written by: Andrew
Reeve |
musicman@aardvarkrecords.co.uk |
|
 |
|
