REVIEW: As One Opening and Desert Island Disco (15/6)

S2H

New Member
Party/Event: As One.....and then Desert Island Disco

Club: Gala Night.....and then Boho

Date: 15th June 2009

DJs:
As One: Terry Farley, Stuart Patterson & Dave Jarvis (Faith), Geddes & Einzelkind (Mulletover)
Desert Island Disco: Someone i didn't recognise/who wasn't on the promo (apologies), Nicky Holloway, Danny Rampling & Trevor Fung (i think)

Cost of entry:
As One: €25 tickets (no free drink)
Desert Island Disco: €10, though should have been €15, according to the door staff (no free drink)

Cost of drinks: Bottled Beer €5, Red Bull €4

Transport:
The "free bus from PdB"on the promo for As One, was either bullsh1t, or was only available during the afternoon? We paid €25 in a taxi at about 8.30-9pm. We then paid €3 to get the discobus back to San An. Another €25 taxi back to bossa after Boho.

Review:
We'd left the decision on our last (stag) night in Ibiza as a "TBC", what with Space the day before and a few of the lads working with tight budgets. When we finally got ourselves sorted (after a siesta), we plumped for As One @ the zoo, ahead of Cocoon opening @ Amnesia. Gala being cheaper, outdoors & an afternoon start. And also likely to be less busy/intense and more accessible music, being the major factors that swung this.

Now, As One was advertised to run from 4.30pm-4am and although we didn't leave PdB till about 8.30pm, we assumed our missing the afternoon session was nothing more than a nuisance/unavoidable lesson to be learned from Sundays' excesses:oops:.

On arrival at "Gala Night" (that needs sorting quicksmart btw, it a sh1t name), i was taken right back to 1996, my first visit to the island and a 18-30 style (it was a different operator) excursion to a party at the same location. This time it wasn't Brandon Block and Alex P playing to a sparse crowd, but 3 different London parties each hosting their own area and unfortunately playing to even less punters.

Lets get this straight first of all, the venue is fcukin ace, as anyone who has been, or seen the pictures will testify. There's a swimming pool (no-one used while we were there), plenty of bars/seating and the seal pit area where Mulletover played hosts, is a great space with a tip top sound system - a hundred or so punters in there and jobs-a-good-un. The other 2 areas seemed very much the ****ty end of the stick. The (hidden & not at all easy to find) area where Disco Bloodbath played, had 2 people watching a DJ when we stumbled through the shrubbery and found it at about 10.30pm.

The area in the centre, with most of the bars looking onto it, was where Faith played. Farley was on when we arrived and was followed by Patterson and Jarvis, all 3 of which played to a handful of people stood drinking at the various bars. As always the Faith DJs played good house music, the odd classic, but mostly modern dance music. I would imagine this area would be infinitely better with a few hundred more bodies added.

I'm not sure if larger numbers had turned out for the afternoon sesh (and for some reason bailed pre-9pm), but there simply weren’t enough people there for this to properly kick off. I'd put the total numbers in there when we arrived at around 200 - a large proportion of which were at the Mulletover seal pit. It was good to see Dave Beer and Jo Mills supporting a new party, as was Mark Wilkinson, presumably on the island as he his party @ El Divino was the following night.

I really enjoyed the Mulletover stage, they had some impressive dancers, just enough people for it to be good and the music was spot-on: deep and pulsating house, Einzelkind was the DJ we listened to for the majority of the 3 hours at the zoo. When the music stopped at midnight it transpired that the indoors area – that many were talking about/staggering round the zoo looking for – wasn’t happening for the opening party and the crowd was slowly dispersed by security towards the exits, a lot of people were being sent home MUCH earlier than scheduled. This resulted in a lot of very p1ssed off people being forced onto the €3 discobus back to San An.

Fast forward a couple of hours and the last night of the stag do bowled into Boho (the ‘new’ Exstasis), mainly looking forward to catching Danny Rampling: the post-retirement years. Sharing the billing was Nicky Holloway, who - being generous - was very enthusiastic and played a few bonefide classics. Being honest, he was either very p1ssed or simply isn’t a very good DJ. I suspect both of these could be true;-)

The two sets were polar opposites. Holloway barely mixed, played far too many stinkers and generally showed why he doesn’t DJ out anymore. Rampling on the other hand was still tight and played much less of the obvious stuff. A few might wince at the likes of Mariah Careys “Dream Lover” (Morales mix, of course) and Jay K’s “Spacecowboy”, but these were tracks that were massive for me when I first got into clubbing, our lot settled in for a few hours of stonewall Ministry classics, staying till Rampling left the decks shortly after 5am.

Boho was hardly much different to last time I went (also in ’96 as it goes), they’ve just brightened the place up, with white EVERYTHING….and presumably removed the hot tub I recall being in there, BITD. The crowd was small, again, probably only a hundred at the most, but it didn’t seem to matter, we all had a ball dancing to the forgotten nuggets & anthems from our fresh-faced days and very much appreciated drinks at less than a fiver!

Rampling, Holloway and the 2 support DJs (I’m not 100% certain but one of them could have been Trevor Fung) all showed what the island means to them, playing to such small numbers, I doff my cap to them for showing so much enthusiasm and making it a good night for those that had swerved Cocoon in favour of a trip down memory lane.

I’ll put my hands up now and admit that I loved it when Rampling played (his own remix of?) The Streets “Heroes”…definitely one of the moments of the holiday for me, the voddy redbull went down a treat again on this night, as it did the whole weekend J
 
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Nice review mate! thanks for that!

I'm looking at going to As One on my final day out there Aug 3rd, before going on to cocoon, hopefully numbers will have picked up a bit by then!

I saw Nicky Holloway at Glastonbury 2008, playing to about 100 people, I thought the same as you, although it was enjoyable lsitening to some of the Old Tunes from mid nineties that I used to love!! happy days!
 
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Think As One has been moved to a venue called Grial. Or so i read on here somewhere.It's no longer a daytime party.
 
they are doing day parties again now but not saying where the venue is they message on face book and say where to meet up
 
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