Journey @ Clwb Ifor Bach, Cardiff
Fri 20 May
We don’t feature a lot of hard dance stuff in these pages – admittedly that’s partly through lack of familiarity; apologies to all the trance-loving Buzz readers. It was kind of where places like Belgium and the Netherlands took hardcore rave in the early 90s when the UK was getting its jungle thing on. The scene hasn’t really changed a huge amount in the last 10 or 20 years (please, write in and correct us if we’re wrong), but there’s a healthy demand for it in Cardiff, and 12 years is a long time in clubbing, so the Journey team deserve their props.
For their last birthday before teen age, they’ve booked SHOKK, a respected Italian hard trance duo who make that powerful, dramatic, thumping music that you always hear in film and TV ‘club scenes’. Claudio Pettannice and Marco Guardia started out in the late 90s before parting ways in 2003, before Pettannice picked up the name again with Nicholas Perrottey in 2008.
Their first EP together, appropriately titled Renaissance, was signed to Nukleuz, one of the top labels in the hard dance world, and since then the duo have produced a ton of popular bangers. These tracks kick straight to the brain’s pleasure centre, if you’re into epic strings, supercharged kick drums, donkin’ basslines – and lots and lots of massive breakdowns, musically speaking.
Admission: £5-£10. Info: 029 2023 2199
(GTDC)