They said it was going to be a wet weekend last Friday and Saturday but thankfully it held itself together for the first of this year’s London festivals, Lovebox. Every year the three day weekend comes to town with unbelievable line-ups crossing a lot of boundaries and opening up exciting artists to those that may not normally get the full experience. People seem to be dead set on moaning about the club scene at the moment about the fact it feels generic, overly commercialised and a bit ‘lost’ in some respects. However... a day in a park has changed all of that!
There is a lot of house music floating about at the moment with the reference ‘deep house’ being loosely thrown about the houses. (No pun intended) However, the real sound of the deep hasn’t really been‘re-discovered’ it has just been recreated with pop vocals and deemed the new sound of clubbing. A tad saddening and a little corruptive in some opinions which is why when walking into the NYC download tent on Saturday at Lovebox, it was like being timewarped back to the real essence of what has been missing. Throughout the day sets from Joy Orbison, Prosumer and Move D were all unique and completely off the hook but the finishing touch from Dixon was out of this world. Closing the tent before he trotted off to Ministry of Sound’s official after party, Dixon cleansed the crowd with a captivating set that took you through several emotions from his first track right to his last which was an amazing Michael Mayer remix.
For the first time Damian Lazarus, Gerd Janson, Miguel Campbell and Dixon all played at Ministry of Sound club a slightly different mix of music policy from the regular Saturday night line-ups. For those who follow Lazarus, an expected fruitfully odd set full of his weird and wonderful experimental vibes were on the cards, yet this was not the case with him playing one of the best sets heard in the main room this year. Perfectly picking up the crowd from a long day, he steered away from the obvious and kept his audience on form ready for DIXON. Now this is a man who oozes of coolness from his threads down to his analogue mixer that only he of course would use. Playing straight after Lazarus from the side, you could see him taking the club in and picking carefully his first track blew everyone away. Finishing up about 7am it was by far one of the best nights the club has had this year and one of the best nights in London for a long time.
Check out this Dixon mix of Saschienne’s track ‘Unknown’ and fall in love just like we did.