I found out a couple of months ago that I would be working near Birmingham on this weekend and I realised it would coincide with Godskitchen's first event of the year at Air.
It was a short drive from my hotel to the club and I arrived around 11.30pm to find the car park was full and a massive queue at the door. The line to 'pay on the door' was tiny compared to the one for E-tickets but I found out this was because the night was sold out so if you didn't have a ticket you weren't getting in! Upon entry to the venue I was initally a bit dissapointed as the main room seemed quite small and was absolutely packed. After a bit of a wander round it transpired that the reason why it was so busy was because the line for the cloakroom went right around the dancefloor and it was a battle to move anywhere until it cleared. The main room was roughly the size of the Max at the Melkweg but the roof was low towards the back. There were a number of dance platforms dotted around and the sound and lights were both excellent. On either side of the DJ booth there were stairs that led to a balcony above the dancefloor that gave an excellent view of both the crowd and the DJ's in action. The 2nd room was on this floor along with a bar and stairs that led up to the last of the 3 rooms.
I got back downstairs in time to see Prydz come on and he immediately got things going with his trademark techy basslines and heavy beats. He bulit things up for the first hour or so and then really took it up a level for the second half of his set. He inevitably played a souped up version of 'proper education' and this coincided with the lasers kicking in and the crowd singing along. He followed this up with his remix of '1983' which made my night
I didn't recognise much of the stuff he played but apparently it was a lot of his own productions. I do remember him playing the Trentmoller remix of 'Go' and his own remix of 'Discopolis which both went down well.
I went in and out of the 2nd room when Nic Fanciulli was on but I didn't really get into his set which surprised me as I normally love seeing him play. I caught about half an hour of D Ramirez and he did a commendable job following Prydz up.
One thing that really impressed me about the night was the friendly atmosphere in the club. Some nights, particularly in the south of England, are full of moody buggers who keep to themselves but I got talking to loads of people and didn't see any attitude at all. I actually went on my own but I never felt out of place - there was a real community atmosphere to the place.
I would strongly recommend any GC's to get over there as it won't dissapoint. Godskitchen mostly put on trance nights there but they have gone down to once a month this year from weekly events last year so it might be a while before another decent line up comes along.
