The 1st Pressure, 05.01.13

IMG_3103 copyAccording to Norman the Doorman at Mercury (lol) more than a dozen people rocked up for Homegrown in December. Clearly these bass lovers have been snoozing and losing because Mercury Live’s latest bass night, Pressure, has been advertising all over the show! Including Twitter, Facebook, lamp posts, highway walls and there were even posters at the last Homegrown!

This past weekend saw the launch of SFR’s, Hyphen’s and Rudeone’s new monthly bass night at Mercury Live. This summer’s been super busy in Cape Town but with most holiday makers heading back home this past week I wondered who would attend. With Pressure releasing pre-sold tickets at a discounted price on Webtickets, clearly they were expecting a lot of people. Mercury Live was full with lots of new faces and lots of girls for a change!

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The night opened with Hyphen’s corner stone opening 90 minutes, setting the tone and warming up for Mix n Blend. Mix n Blend played a different dnb set to their usual sets, far more serious and artsy. Next up was SFR who played his usual doze of jump-up love, sprinkled with his own tunes which rocked the dance floor. Niskerone followed and played far darker than he usually does. Mikisan was his guest MC and together they played a fantastic set. Rude One was last and he kept the darker theme going. None of the sets were along the usual Counterstrike heaviness but that’s to be expected with 500 Mills’ departure. (There’s only one Counterstrike!)

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To add to the drum n bass line up, Pressure also hosted a guest dance floor downstairs featuring Leggo! Usually found at the Waiting Room on a Thursday night with a UK Bass theme, Leggo! went in strong with White Nite, Queen of dubstep Funafuji and Blotchy (Cold Turkey). I loved their old school dubstep beats (NO BRO-STEP YAY!) and thought it was a perfect compliment to upstairs.

The only downfall of the night were the slow bars. The upstairs bar is SO slow, Mercury seems to have lost their main barmen over the last year and it really impacts the service. There was also only one barman downstairs. How one barman is meant to serve an entire dance floor, I don’t know. So getting a drink was a 30 minute mission all night…needless to say, I saved a lot of money! Also, at the last Homegrown the 2nd upstairs bar was open, this definitely needs to happen again at Pressure because the main bar can’t cope with the numbers.

On the up side, the lighting at Pressure was awesome! Since 500 Mills was an animator himself, they had big shoes to fill and they did, thanks to Visual Contraband (usually seen at The Assembly). VC were responsible for the video montages and projecting mapping that looked awesome. Lots of pretty girly colours so I was happy 🙂

I’ll definitely be at the next Pressure to see what else these guys get up to because apparently it’s going to be different every month with new guest dance floors and line ups. Long may drum n bass at Mercury last!

There are more videos on this Keek website but I don’t know how to embed them but if you want to see more then check Bagoobie’s Keek account.

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