12/09/2024
Studio:nine. 2000. People have been waiting for this gig for weeks. A massive drum & bass DJ from the UK is tearing it out. Not a single person on the dance floor with a phone. Sweat, flailing limbs. The biggest tune of the now that only 3 DJs have on dubplate has spread like wildfire over Napster is teased in with quick cuts. Half the crowd instantly screams. The drop hits, the room explodes. The tune is pulled up, every single person in the room is screaming in unison all locked into one feeling of pure joy. The re cue. The excitement of the crowd as they are waiting to relive the drop again, the anticipation tight like string, hungry, grinning at each other, locked in. The drop is glorious but then the next tune comes in immediately, building and combining on top to drive the energy higher, and that energy just keeps going up with each layering, up, up, across, deeper, and up again. A fu***ng journey into some other place, magical.
I hope these types of moments still happen out there, it’s been a very long time since I’ve witnessed that type of intense fever pitch unison moment. I blame phones and social media. 100%. Half the crowd has their brains in two places at once. The one in the dance, half connected. The other half thinking about the next reel, or what might be happening in the internet space. Taking some s**t video to share back to the DJ which then the DJ has to laboriously curate and share back themselves to feed the beast for some bored disconnected person to scroll past and token like for 2secs.
Let’s take back our dance floors. I feel surges of this vibe sometimes and when I look around at us all dancing no-one has their phone. We are all together.
Put your fu***ng phone away and get down.
