One of the bigger nightlife events on the SUSU Freshers’ 2013 calendar, Sub:Mission was certainly an essential event, situated at Southampton’s only “Super Club,” Oceana. There was a lot of excitement among the large crowd to see the popular Radio 1 DJ, Zane Lowe, headline the club’s main room.
Situated inside Southampton’s large entertainment complex “Leisure World,” Oceana Southampton is huge, with multiple rooms and bars; the perfect venue to host a lineup of big name DJs. In the main central room Lowe was supported by Redlight and DJ Zinc.
Veteran British DJ, Benjamin Petitt, aka Zinc kicked off the night around 11pm. Most popularly known for his drum and bass, Zinc has recently branched off into his own self declared sub genre of “Crack House,” and started his set with a fluid build up of this and progressive house. Zinc’s MC made his presence known, as Zinc began mixing in some big grooves and beats, ideal to get the club moving. Having well over a decade of experience on the club scene really showed, as Zinc’s set was simply one effortless transition after another. The highlight came towards the end when Zinc played Katy B’s top ten hit “Katy on a Mission,” to a great reception.
Following Zinc’s set, rig for Lowe’s set was unveiled, an impressive booth made to look like it was constructed out of speakers, all surrounded by LED lighting. This drew even more clubbers into the main room, to witness Lowe start up his set. Lowe began uptempo throwing in some new trap-style tunes, before slowing down with Madeon’s “Icarus.”
Lowe made some ambitious and technical transitions, often taking the crowd by surprise with unexpected drops and mixes, such as double dropping “Bass Canon,” in time to “The Harlem Shake.” Lowe was adept on the Mic as well, doing an excellent job of keeping the main room packed out and responsive; no need for an MC. The crowd seemed particularly excited by the more recent electro tracks, that have been doing the rounds this summer on many of the top DJ’s playlists this summer, “Earthquake,” “Animals,” and “LRAD.” The impressive stage set up that Oceana had set up, with three large strobes, and multiple CO2 cannons accentuated Lowe’s biggest drops, and made sure everyone on the dancefloor was going crazy, a large number of people got up on each others shoulders, aggravating the club bouncers to no end.
Following Lowe, it was Redlight’s turn to take the stage. The DJ from bristol came accompanied by his MC, who got in front of the booth to really interact with the crowd. Redlight’s single “Lost in your Love,” went down to a particularly good response.
Praise must also go to DJ and MC Oceana who chose to fill the gaps in each acts change over time. These guys did a great job at keeping the energy from the previous act rolling over into the next set, and laid down a incredibly inspired mix of Sub Focus’ “Tidal Wave,” into Birdy Nam Nam’s track “Down for the Night.”
Overall the event had a well suited line up to the venue, and each DJ delivered an original set, with club favorites, as well as some more ambitious tracks and mixes that would not usually be heard on a standard club night.
