Have you ever experienced a feeling so enchanting that you loose control of yourself and get totally immersed in a magical spectacle of sight and sound with your jaw dropping and eyes wonderstruck in amazement of what just transpired before your eyes? Well, that somewhat describes the feeling we had when we finally walked out of the venue after witnessing an incredible dance music extravaganza last Sunday evening. We say ‘somewhat’ because it’s rather difficult to articulate something so transcendental and establish just how beautiful it all turned out to be.
As we entered the venue, the atmosphere was already electric as groups of friends were entering the venue together, beaming at each other with their eyes lit up waiting to make merry to some fantastic music on the cards. Adding to that were some fans who had chosen to take things a notch higher by adding to the aura with colourful mau5head’s, costumes and head gear amongst other things.
Leading dance music event organizer, Sunburn had stopped at nothing to provide Delhi the time of their lives with a massive stage and a sound system so powerful, you could hear the booming crescendo miles away from the stage with absolute clarity.
Kicking things off was Delhi based talented producer, Dualist Inquiry who right from the word go had the crowd roaring with glee while treating them to his trademark style tunes and bootlegs while whipping out his guitar from time to time enthralling the crowd which had rapidly begun building up with his unique sound. As you would expect, he drew the loudest cheers from the crowd when he unleashed his magnificent track, Gravitat and his beautiful bootleg of Number2 by Adustam.
After an absolutely dazzling set by Dualist Inquiry, abundantly talented techno producer/DJ, Madhav Shorey aka Kohra took stage and took the crowd on a joyride packed with a barrage of dark techno tunes which had many hooked at the sheer brilliance of his talent. Seamlessly mixing one track into another, Kohra ensured the crowd couldn’t stop grooving with elan and continued to cheer him on as he effortlessly kept spellbinding them. Making for a fitting build up to the evening ahead, he clearly had no plans of holding back. Sure enough however, it was soon time for him to depart from the stage and let the globally renowned, R3hab take stage and unleash some enticing electro tunes.
The energetic R3hab aka Fadil El Ghould likes to take his fans to a transcendental level and never get them out of it. The Dutch hit-maker shot into the limelight in 2008, when he collaborated with Hardwell on ‘MRKRSTFT’ which of course went on to become a big club hit & even went on to be featured on the 2008 Sensation White CD. Ever since then it has been a meteoric rise for the internationally acclaimed DJ/producer and he has clearly taken it in his stride.
El Ghoul has over time made his presence felt globally by managing to churn out hit after hit consistently, earning him his title to this day. Living up to his calibre, the Dutchman brought all the drive behind his power packed, ‘INeedR3hab’ madness and passion to the colossal event, making for one big party. He’s an artist who can take any song and make it into his own, and Sunday evening was no exception with everyone getting pumped for some ‘Chainsaw Madness’. If you’re a great producer, and you’ve got boundless energy, you know you’ll pump out an excellent gig every single time, and Delhi wasn’t disappointed in the least.
The man believes in excess and he brings it to the audience; moderation was definitely not the theme of his gig. Intense drops, excessive sounds, it was absolute mayhem in there! The mans a beast and he drops some beastly tunes.
New Delhi are you excited for tonight?!?!?? @deadmau5 @SunburnFestival
— R3HAB (@R3HAB) March 16, 2014
Picture this: the sun is just dipping over the horizon and you can see the full moon starting to come out and it’s illuminating the entire arena. Dualist Inquiry and Kohra just got you in the groove with their chill and tech tunes and you’re just about ready to start partying. Enter R3hab – the man literally almost jumps onto the console and jumpstarts the music. He teases you for the first few tracks and then leaps into an adrenaline pumping remix of Fatboy Slim’s anthem, Eat Sleep Rave Repeat and before you know it, he’s got you shouting out the lyrics you have come to live by.
The music didn’t slow down even for a second and the atmosphere was absolutely electric. The elated crowd, the air and the ground were thrumming with the constant bass and sound and everyone was getting swept up in the energy. Even though it was a cool evening, the night got heated up pretty quickly with R3hab’s consistently ambitious tunes.
Now what’s a concert these days without a remix of a popular Coldplay song? Yup, you got that one right – not as special as you’d like it to be, and sure enough when R3hab played the evergreen Every Teardrop Is A Waterfall, the mood grew a little more somber and sweet, and the love was spread straight from the console to the adoring fans before him. That’s a trick R3hab has managed to master, taking the audience on a spiritual journey through his master blaster remixes. It’s hard to imagine, but if you were there you’d understand the sheer power of his set, making him one of the best entertainers of today.
While he’s easy on the eyes, the ace producer certainly doesn’t give your ears the same respite and as always he had you clapping your hands, singing along to his tunes without getting a second to stop and gasp for breath. It’s exhilarating and exhausting – all in the best ways possible.
New Delhi thank you for an amazing night!!!
— R3HAB (@R3HAB) March 16, 2014
There’s something mystical which comes about through the infectious power in a good set at a concert. One way is through the sound, and the other is through the visuals & production and on Sunday evening, the images flashing across the giant screens were just as energetic as the sounds, completely in sync and vivid in their colours and movements. Green and white lasers, flashing across the arena, bars and stripes making patterns you’d see in an art gallery, and girls and parties marked the majority of the visuals during his set. As he got up on to the console and asked us to raise our hands – his name flashed across the screens reminding us that we were witnessing true star power and a set we wouldn’t forget too easily.
Deadmau5 might have been the main attraction for a majority of the fans, but R3hab surely held his own with a combination of energy, energy & more energy. When the drop came, he jumped and everyone present jumped with him. The set started and finished and the audience was left reeling, and wanting more; one thing is for sure however, after the experience – everyone needed a little more R3hab.
The mau5 had arrived in India before the man had even touched down in India. When a promotional poster revealing a silhouette of the DJ sitting on an elephant (classic Joel) made waves last October, fans across the nation started booking plane tickets and designing mau5heads for what would be one of India’s finest moments of its love affair with dance music. Fans were psyched out to expect the unexpected from the mau5, because Deadmau5 never lives up to the hype, he goes beyond it.
A little while back we had unveiled an exclusive interview with the Mau5, where he first told the world about his obsession with Tunak Tunak Tun Tun and ever since then speculation among the electronic music following in India was rife, with Twitter feeds skyrocketing with the hashtag ‘#Dalermau5′. A few days later, Deadmau5 posted a preview of his remix of the bhangra banger, and as he eloquently put it, ‘shit just went next level’.
India…. This just happened. Shit just went next level.
Amidst the gripping tweets and banter, finally after a little bit of waiting it seemed it was official. #Dalermau5 was happening, and there was no stopping it. All the Twitter love and ‘rab rakhas’ were going to crystallize into an onstage bromance; we just didn’t know when. And then this happened:
Tonight is going to be off the chain, but tomorrow night? Oh god Delhi, just you wait till you see what we have lined up 😉
— deadmau5 (@deadmau5) March 15, 2014
Anticipating how much more off the chain it could get, Delhi tracked the movements of the pagdi-wearing, lassi-drinking, tunak tunak tun tun-dropping sensation – and those were just his onstage antics. “During his India tour, Deadmau5 picked coconuts, slept on monogrammed pillows and railed a Lamborghini.” – Instagram. “At 200 miles per hour.” – Twitter.
On D-Day, the grounds were impressively spacious enough to streamline a crowd that was wonderfully more cult than commercial. You know that a city knows its electronic music when there’s a mau5head shaped niche in its fan following, and Delhi turned up. It was Mau5heads (and Guy Fawkes masks) everywhere, storied sound systems and even taller opening acts – crowd pleaser Dualist Inquiry, crowd easer Kohra and the sensational, R3hab.
Wearing a glow-in-the-dark grinning mau5head that’s ironically reminiscent of its arch-rival the Cheshire Cat, Joel Zimmerman stepped on stage to roars of ecstasy from the audience. Once at the console, with great stage etiquette (“Delhi, what the f*** is up?”), Deadmau5 indulged his signature style – alternating between the man and the mask, lighting a cigarette onstage like the rebel he is, and dealing in some crowd teasing with a set punctured with moments of silence and power drops.
He opened his set with the goosebump-worthy, “Avarita” and laying down track after track from the phenomenal ‘>album title goes here<‘, his selection of experimental electronic music was testament to the feeling that there’s nothing like hearing the songs that you fell in love with being mixed live by the man himself.
Half an hour into his set, Deadmau5 revealed the most well-known and well-kept secret of his entire tour – #DalerMau5. When Joel tweeted about a coffee lassi run with the rajah of Bhangra on the afternoon of the show, Mehndi’s presence at the concert was almost set in stone. However, even knowing that Punjabi pop-star was part of the line-up couldn’t have stopped the insanity that broke through the crowd when the two legends met on stage. Without even a single rehearsal, da mau5 and da man collaborated to music’s freshest genre, Bhangradelic. Mehndi took to the mike as the crowd went into wedding sangeet mode, busting out their best moves to the sickest remix of his massive hit Tunak Tun Tun. While they performed, two things were clear: some Hindi songs just don’t get old, and there’s no song a Deadmau5 mix can’t conquer.
While Deadmau5 mixed classic Hindi songs into electronic melodies, Mehndi got the crowd singing at full power to the Holi anthem Rang Barse Bheege Chunar Wali – with the impending celebrations the next day, it was just perfection. All that was missing were waterworks and holi ka rang bursting out from the stage, and if Daler Mehndi had hit us with water balloons, we would without a doubt have been the happiest people ever to get hit by water balloons. Everyone was so in the zone, our reaction was just haye rabba.
Soon after the Dalermau5 peak, the vibe began to crescendo brilliantly. Deadmau5 played it right with Moar Ghosts N’ Stuff, giving us the best ‘Throwback Sunday’ with one of the tunes that got many of us raving to electronic music in the first place. It was non-stop mau5head banging and strobelight seduction as he stepped down from the console and danced with us to his iconic song. His remix of one of electronic music’s rare gems, Morgan Page’s Longest Road, and one of his freshest tracks, Drop the Poptart, a seamless blend of banging beats and smooth melodies were just sublime to hear over the speakers. With every song and every beat, Deadmau5 created a magical wavelength for all of two hours, with raging peaks and emotional dips.
And then he disappeared, but only for a few heart-stopping seconds. The LED mau5head almost levitated back to the console, wielding an Indian flag in such a patriotic way that there should be a national holiday named after him. The crowd exploded into cheers for the man who had embraced our country with so much love that when he began to play an acapella version which transitioned into the Tommy Trash remix of The Veldt, he scattered the love across the sizeable venue and every fan standing in front of him, sent it right back at him.
One of the most epic moments of the night was when the master mau5 requested his bobbling mau5heads to switch on their cellphone flashlights to create a fairy-light like effect across his sea of fans. Like technological fireflies, we held up our starry sky in (literally) the dark of the night, as we swayed in silence as a song that was all too familiar started to swell up on the speakers and in our bodies. It was the memory we’d never forget – that time that Deadmau5 played Strobe in our hometown. With an exquisitely slow and smooth build up to probably the most beauteous electronic music song ever, everyone in possession of a heart began to tear up. When the song came out five years ago, we doubt anyone would have ever imagined that Delhi would have the privilege of witnessing it performed live so soon. But we did, and it was utterly majestic.
Right before his swan song, the man of the hour made a little appreciative speech to tie the ribbon on what had been a love fest of a night. When he wished us “Happy Holiii!”, even the wildest Indian festival clearly wasn’t to be an anticlimax after a performance that stellar and then he dropped the best non-musical bomb of the night, making us the proudest and humblest race in the world, exclaiming, “I don’t usually agree with too many DJ’s but I will agree with Axwell who once said, ‘When I want money, I play in Vegas; When I want to party, I play in Miami but when I want fucking love, I play in India! Shit, absolute perfection”.
His coup de grâce (because it was that painful to see him go) was Raise Your Weapon, which he converted into a massive bass boosted banger, before finishing off his set with tinkering piano chords that could have killed us and sent us to heaven. Even without an encore, the crowd couldn’t stop its applause – if we weren’t standing already, that would have been Deadmau5’s standing ovation.
He flew back with a miniature Ganesh idol, and we went home with memories of another kind of God. The hangover is going to last long, so put on one of the mau5’s albums to try and get some closure from the best night of your life or you can watch the epic coffee run that’s already going viral. (Watch it here if you haven’t already!)
Special thanks to Sunburn for delivering such a fantastic event, and executing beyond brilliantly possibly the best and biggest night of dance music in India. Deadmau5, mad respect to you for your art and your personal desi touch. Thank you for making your India tour your own, and our own. In your interview with us you told us that you have a thing for India – well, the feeling is more than mutual. You are honestly like no other artist we’ve ever seen before. And India? Nicely done. We finally left the man who has the last word on everything, speechless!
I have no words to describe the love in India. I don't.
— deadmau5 (@deadmau5) March 16, 2014
Reviewed by: Vedika Berry & Mallika Pal
Edited by: Aditya Seth
Pictures by: Angad Singh & Sunburn
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