Party/Event: Armada / Release Yourself
Club: Amnesia
Date: September 1, 2009
DJs: Main Room: Armin van Buuren, Blake Jarrell. Terrace: Roger Sanchez, Tom Stephan
Cost of entry: 30 euro per ticket purchased on Amnesia website.
Transport: Discobus from San An and back. 3 euros each way.
Review: This is my and my fiance's second time in Ibiza but last year we went only to Space, so this is really first timers impression.
Although I have loads of trance sets on my computer (AvB, PvD, Tiesto etc.) I'm not a big fan of this genre anymore. But because my fiance loves Armin and Roger Sanchez it's more like my cup of tea, going to that night seemed to be a perfect choice.
We got there at around 2am and there were no queues at all. Just a few people standing around so we got inside without waiting. If I had known we wouldn't be searched by bouncers I would have taken my camera, but decided not to take a risk. What made me laugh was a door price of tickets. 55 euros each, which was almost a double price we paid on Amnesia website.
Anyway, we got straight into main room where Blake Jarrell was playing. Dance floor was packed but there was a lot of empty spaces under balconies.I don't know what was he playing because we decided to see what is like in the other room. Terrace turned out to be almost twice bigger the Main Room, making it look like a side room really.Roger Sanchez had already been behind the desks and whole place was perfectly busy. Lots of people but enough room to dance. No queues to bars and toilets. At that point Roger was mainly playing this summer's tunes like "Leave the world behind" or remix of Joe Hunt's "Every freakin night" plus remixes or mash ups of some older tunes and everybody seemed to be up for it.
There was a podium in the middle of the dance floor where regular Amnesia dancers were dancing, but at around 3am they were replaced by dancers who seemed to be there exclusively for Release Yourself party. Amazing lasers, ice cannon going off and acrobats suspended above the crowd, that really took this party to the next level. Enough to say, that my fiance didn't want to leave despite the fact that Armin had already started his set in the Main Room.
Eventually after 4am we decided to see what's going on over there. Like a few hours earlier, the dance floor was packed but it was almost empty under the balconies. It looked like no special decoration had been made for that event as only names displayed on big screens indicated what night it was. Paul van Dyk's "Nothing but you" was on, then Armin dropped M6 "Opus sectrum" and everybody seemed to enjoy it. Unfortunately we didn't. First of all because of sound system. You couldn't actually hear anything apart from thumping bass and higher frequencies.
Armin was playing exactly what he is famous for - melodic tunes - but you could hardly hear a melody because of the sound system setting. The atmosphere and crowd differed from what we experienced on the Terrace. It was all about hands in the air. When thumping bass stopped and some melody was going on for a while, Armin was spreading his arms which resulted in more hands in the air. Magic moment which wasn't magic at all. The same scenario was repeated every 5 minutes and nothing else seemed to be happening. On the Terrace woman to man ratio looked like 1:1, while in the Main Room it seemed to be 1:10. At first glance someone might think it was a gay night. We saw more women at last years Matinee than in the Main Room . All these factors made us get back to where Roger Sanchez was playing. Suprisingly after 5am Terrace was almost dead. Roger was dopping some darker tunes but only a few punters, who were mostly off there faces, were still dancing. After about 30 minuntes we decided to call it a night.
We went to bus stop only to realize I had lost all the cash. 6am in the middle of Ibiza and about 10km away from hotel. Fortunately I still had my debit card, so we went down the road to San Rafael, found a cash machine and caught a discobus.
All in all it was a very good night but Armin turned out to be a big dissapointment. It wasn't really his fault. I would rather blame the sound system setting and the crowd, which was mainly responding by only putting hands in the air.