I got groovy with Groove Armada

Southampton’s electronic music scene was somewhat spoilt for choice on Saturday night. Long gone are the days when we only have random reality TV stars filling our Saturday night slots.

A new night was opening up called DIY, featuring some of the local and talented DJs. The incredibly talented Jackmaster was playing at Junk alongside Jon Rust, but the night that was really making a buzz around the city was Groove Armada and Tough love, so once again, out I ventured…

Tough Love started off the night, and the two DJs who have been a regular at Sankey’s Ibiza this year alongside Amine Edge and Dance started well. I can imagine it would be quite difficult going into a crowd of people when you’re opening up for such a huge act, but they certainly did make a good go of it.

The tune that particularly stood out was certainly S-Mans ‘Dangerous Thoughts’, a song so bassy that if you stood still on the bottom floor of Switch your drink would shake in your hands, and that isn’t even meant to be exaggeration. The label that Tough Love belongs to tends to have a very bass motivated and energetic sound, and it seemed to be something that hit it off with the crowd. You could also certainly see that people were enjoying it- everyone’s a winner.

Following a good Tough Love performance were the the big guns, Groove Armada, and what they came out with was a special performance indeed. Interestingly, the music was not as brilliant as it has been; it was great, but not brilliant. The thing that made it special was the front man of Groove Armada, and the crowd. You could tell that he absolutely loved every single track he was playing, and you could tell the crowd absolutely loved him.

Another packed night at Switch

Bouncing off each other’s energy and bouncing the inflatable balls round the room, the place erupted in sound. The lighting was for some reason even better than previous weeks. More Space Ibiza than Sex Dungeon (as some clubs like to have their lights) and I’m fairly confident I saw a crowd of about 20 people bowing for more than 20 minutes.

That was followed, unfortunately, by what I felt was a flat performance from Them Agen. It’s always going to be hard coming on after something like that, but if you keep the tempo up, and use the right song selection, then you can feed off the energy in the room, rather than watch the crowd deflate. And deflate is what happened.

Usually when you see an act not do as well as you’d like it isn’t that much of a bother, but this did leave me a little dissatisfied when I eventually left. Oh one thing that was cool though, was MK just turned up to the show and said hi to some people and it did get the crowd a bit hyped to be fair. Told you he was a nice guy.

Highlight of the night: Groove Armada dropping Superstylin’ too incredible lights, huge inflatable bouncy balls and Switch’s impressive sound system.

Moan of the night: Them Agen, and unfortunately the bouncy balls got a bit annoying, especially when one knocked a drink out of a girl’s hand who was stood next to me.

Rating: Gotta be a solid 4/5

Next week I’ll be going to Route 94 and Richy Ahmed and really hoping nobody plays ‘My Love’.