The Gallery/Vaccine . . . reviewed

11.07.2006

With the exit stage left of TranceGeneration and Knowwhere, Turnmills’ The Gallery has pretty much got London’s trance scene all to itself, and it has capitalised with a series of quality line-ups and dollar-tastic attendance. Their position has been strengthened further following their collaboration with Vaccine for one Friday a month, taken under the giant wing of The Gallery after the departure of one of the Vaccine promoters.

Benny Benassi is grinding out the techiest of piledriver tech house in the main room when we arrive, with lashings of acid, but the Vaccine room is where the action is, with the enviably youthful Kyau vs Albert. Massively well-respected producers and owners of top-drawer trance label Euphonic, KvA have more recently been DJing round the world. Their style is fantastically dancey, and a packed crowd bounced enthusiastically to, among others, a glorious remix of Coldplay’s ‘Talk’, ‘Voller Sterne’, their own huge new tune ‘Walk Down’, and something else exceedingly beautiful which will be communicated to you as soon as it’s identified.

The main room was packed out for the beginning of Eddie Halliwell’s set but he set off not on a trancey tip at all. It seems likely that The Gallery at least partly took on Vaccine so they could ‘un-trance’ the main room and attract punters from more than one genre. Eddie’s set descended into complete thrash as far as I remember, with some really quite odd track choices.

The house room saw a theatrical and classy set from James Mowbray, of Mixmag fame, and Judge Jules delivered his usual brand of electro to a — surprisingly — not suffocatingly rammed main room. The recent structural alterations to Turnmills seem to have made some positive difference.

Our night was finished off with Karl G in the Vaccine room, dishing out crowd pleasing tunes including his own remix of ‘Speed of Sound’ — possibly the greatest tune of summer 2005.

A good time was had by all, and it is brilliant to see a small night like Vaccine succeed, but it is a massive shame that the trance scene has been so decimated in London.

Original article from harderfaster.net