11:36 a.m., SAT, I enter on the guest list with my +1. I feel pretty swell.
This Saturday, January 10, marks the kickoff of the tenth edition of Dômesicle, a series of winter DJ/VJ parties in the heart of the SAT’s immersive dome. My first time. Exciting. We go down one floor, coat check, the beats of the music echoing through the building. The dance floor awaits us three floors up and lets us know it.
Just a moment to put in our earplugs—hearing is precious, and off we go!
I was promised a pure techno evening, hypnotic rhythms intertwined with organic sounds, intensity. All coupled with projections that were as minimalist and hypnotic as they were enveloping and architectural.
We enter the dome under a cathedral-like kaleidoscope, Mike Larry has just started his set. The crowd is fairly calm. Passive, according to my friend: “North Americans don’t know how to party.” He drags me to the front of the turntables. There, people are dancing, shaking, getting carried away by the music. The DJ is good, repeatedly eliciting cheers from the crowd as he changes tracks.
I lean against the barriers, the DJ within sight. I soak up the atmosphere. Sustained, repetitive yet varied rhythms, from which unexpected sound samples emerge. We let ourselves be carried away. The strobe lights blind me, but I like the images on the dome. I have a soft spot for the most minimalist elements: the pulsating grid that hangs over the crowd like a neon red net, the unexpected starry sky formed by letters of the alphabet floating in space, the box filled with gray spheres that continually evaporate behind the DJ.
The crowd remains fairly placid, happy to be there, but few are dancing. Several are chatting.
My friend dances nonstop. Electro music is his thing. Me, not so much.
The volume, the flashes of light, it’s a lot for me, a little too much. I get overstimulated easily, which is a bad combination. I take breaks, then go back to dancing. Dance, break, dance. It’s paradoxical, but I think I would enjoy a more intense, noisier, more disjointed production more. Intensity can be an antidote to overstimulation, but I feel like I’m stuck in between.
Back from the break, one o’clock in the morning, the crowd has been getting more lively for a while now. Set change, Measure Divide takes the stage. The dome seems to be moving at full speed through a tunnel of light oscillating between blue and orange. A guy is wildly showing off his best moves at the entrance to the satosphere. The selection seems less varied to me than with Mike Larry, more intense perhaps.
When it’s time to go home half an hour later, my friend is having a good time but is falling asleep. My head hurts. I’ve been here for two hours and counting. I don’t think I’m the target audience. I regret missing XIA’s set. Despite this, I would be willing to try the experience again, as the setting is certainly impressive. Worth checking out with other genres of music.
