This past Saturday, trance and house music fans packed into D.C.’s Echostage to witness one of the more memorable shows Washington has had in 2012. Although EDM fans in the D.M.V. are very privileged in to see the best DJ’s on a weekly basis, 2012 has flown under the radar with arguably no landmark indoor event that transcends the typical 90 minute – 2 hour set that headlining DJ’s conduct. The last massive indoor event that resonates with most show-goers in the area was November of 2011 when ClubGlow brought Avicii and Armin Van Buuren on back to back nights at the 10,000 person capacity D.C. armory. The weekend was officially deemed as legendary when Armin delivered a rare 6-hour set. Fast forward one year, and D.C. club lovers finally received the extravagant, international-newsworthy event they had longed for; a unique 7-hour set featuring two of the world’s most popular and accomplished DJ’s – Ferry Corsten and Markus Schulz.
Markus Schulz is America’s Best DJ
Although their resumes speak for themselves, here’s a brief overview of each artist’s accolades to emphasize how special the night really was. In recent years, Corsten’s stardom took off as he was ranked as high as the #7 DJ in the world according to DJ Magazine and his weekly “Corsten’s Countdown” Sirius XM radio show is one of the most popular and longest running just behind Armin and Tiesto’s shows. Up until this year, Markus Schulz has consistently been ranked in the top 10 for DJ Magazine’s Top 100 poll. In addition, he recently won the title of “America’s Best DJ” which speaks volumes about his work considering the competition pool of nominees such as Pretty Lights, Bassnectar, Skrillex, and Steve Aoki.
Ferry Corsten & Markus Schulz @ Echostage Photos
Very infrequently do two top-bill DJ’s perform at a club event in a single night, and it is even rarer that that they will be on stage spinning tracks together for the entire duration of the set. They created the set in a manner where during the first 2 hours and last 2 hours of the event, Corsten would play a mini set for about 40 minutes then Schulz would follow suit, but neither left the stage at any point. Then during the middle 3 hours of the night, they would go “Back 2 Back” where Corsten would play one song, Schulz would play the next song, and continue this pattern. For people who perceive trance as strictly old school techno beats with long lulls of melodies that are about deep love & broken hearts and is only catered to the older generation of EDM fans, they’ve got it twisted. Ferry and Markus had similar styles of playing songs that blend electro-house and trance, where the majority of songs were hard, fast rhythms with thunderous bass.
It appeared that the arrangement of the set was to play exhilarating dance-party, electro-trance songs for about 15-20 minutes, then play a slower melodic trance song, then immediately rev it back up to the hard dancing beats. This was a great way to control the pace of the crowd because everybody could party hard for a good chunk of time and then get a solid breather before their heart rates exceeded dangerous levels. Each DJ sprinkled in some of their old classics but they mainly focused on their latest tracks from their radio shows, Corsten’s “WKND” album, and Schulz’s “Thoughts Become Things II” & “Scream” albums.
In addition to the track selection, the charisma and enthusiasm of the two DJ’s was exceptional and that really fueled the energy of the party. It’s difficult to choose one defining moment from a great 7 hour set but I would have to say it was towards the middle of the night when they played their collaboration song “Loops and Tings”. It is one of the bigger EDM tracks of the past year, and when it played, Ferry and Markus really gave full effort to get the crowd fired up. Based on the twitter feeds and the fact that Sirius XM’s Electric Area radio station blocked off all 7 hours to air the live set, there’s no doubt that this was a milestone show in 2012.
With veterans Corsten and Schulz providing an uplifting “Back 2 Back set” and newer DJ’s Porter Robinson & Zedd also doing “Back 2 Back” sets recently, maybe this will spark an exciting string of unprecedented “Back 2 Back” sets from the biggest artists in EDM.
*Post written by Arish Doha
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