5th June 2009 - Waveform In The City @ Club Colosseum, Vauxhall, London

With festival season right round the corner, this was the last chance to have a knees-up somewhere in the city, before all the parties packed up their sound systems and wellies and headed off out to muddy fields for the summer. After taking a quick look in our calendars we decided where better than Waveform In The City, the warm up party to the Waveform Festival, which we reviewed in our last issue? After taking one look at the line up we knew this wasn't an event to miss. Words & pics: Will Poole

The Stages were run by Arch-Angel as usual and also, for the first time, Wonky Disco, replacing Tribe of Frog who featured at last years festival. The tag line on the flyer expressed that they were "literally going to squeeze Waveform Festival into an indoor venue," a tall order, but from the looks of their line up they might have actually cracked it. They had clearly aimed at giving the best of what Waveform had to offer, from psytrance stars Fearsome Engine, Tristan and Laughing Buddha (all signed to the almighty Nano Records) to the more breaksy Far Too Loud, Hexadecimal and Freshold.

We managed to get to the Waveform event on time, despite delays on the ever problematic tube. Tonight's location was The Colosseum in Vauxhall. The capacity is well over a thousand and is comprised of three rooms. The main room was taken over by Wonky Disco, another slightly smaller room by Arch-Angel and the third by Gaia Chill. The whole set up felt strangely familiar, but it was only by the time Far Too Loud came on that it clicked; it felt almost exactly like the last Wonky Disco. Now I'm not saying that the similarity was a bad thing, but when you've come to an event expecting a festival theme, you don't expect the event you went to a few months prior. But we didn't let this get in the way of getting our boogie on.

The lighting and decor was the usual psy mix of lasers and lycra. Oh how I love psychedelic events, they always manage to go that one step further in these departments than any other. It's this human touch that makes you feel like you really have taken the red pill and that the rabbit hole is also the set of Shelobs cave from Lord of the Rings. I wonder if spiders like psytrance?

By about four o'clock tiredness had crept in and the feeble body began to moan, so whilst regaining my strength I began to think about all the parties I had been to in the last few years. Some stood out as being exceptional, some less so. So where did Waveform In The City stand? Well, not too far up actually. You see, even though the music was excellent and the audience were friendly, it lacked the creative inspiration I found at other events, and most importantly it lacked originality. This is not to say that this was a bad event, far from it. It's just not one which will stick out and have people talking about it for years afterwards. It will just be one of those nights out that kind of melt into your memory. It felt like it lacked the energy Wonky Disco had, and their almost obsessive care to detail. Website:
www.waveformfestival.com

By the end of the night I was officially danced out, the music was fantastic and I couldn't fault any of it. Maybe that's all you need at a party, but that doesn't stop me wanting that little bit more and it's because of that I walked away feeling a bit let down. Not because it was bad, but because how amazing it could have been. By the time this article comes out Waveform Festival will have come and gone. I hope that this was just a blip and that when they do get out to that field, they kick hippie ass.