Anthemic tunes and luscious visuals on offer with Pete Tong and The Heritage Orchestra Ibiza Classics show in Birmingham - review
Nothing screams 'nostalgia' quite like one of these retrospective looks at one of the great movements of music - the Ibiza club scene's heyday.
Pete Tong, iconic DJ and voice of Radio 1's dance output for so long, has long been joined with the talents of Jules Buckley and his Heritage Orchestra in recreating some of the biggest dance tracks of the past 30 years with a classical lean.
They've released albums together - the latest, Ibiza Chilled, out at the beginning of this month. But it's not just getting some classically trained musicians to play over the top of a dance anthem. You can't get any idea of the scale of the work that goes into these reimaginings until you see them all sat there showing you.
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Despite the superstar DJ stood at the top of the stage and the energetic Buckley jiving around at the front, the real treat in seeing HER-O live is just how much it means to them.
At one point, the violinists were caught on the big screen laughing at something one of them had done. At another, the orchestra were all pushing imaginary buttons for The Chemical Brothers' huge hit. When given his namecheck by Tong, drummer Adam Betts - who had all night been bopping along behind his kit like the coolest of cats - stood to salute the crowd with one huge fist clenched in the air and the biggest of grins across his face.
Their own vocalists are full of energy, and chief among them is the mischievous Vula Malinga who kicks Buckley off his conducting podium for laughs and captivates the crowd with her wonderfully powerful vocals.
They all bring to life a host of anthemic tunes pieced together with luscious visuals of Ibiza by day at the start of the set, through the evening outside Café Del Mar and Café Mambo as the sun descends over Sunset Strip, into the raucous nightlife of San Antonio and the superclubs spread around it.
Stardust's Music Sounds Better With You sounded great with the twanging guitar, and the crowd particularly loved the early drops of Robert Miles' Children and 9 PM Till I Come by ATB.
And given their local connections the guest vocalists went down a treat too. Wolverhampton soul queen Beverley Knight popped by for a couple. While Bewdley's Becky Hill got a loud cheer too after declaring: "This is pretty much a hometown show for me, I'm a Worcestershire girl." Her efforts for the night included a stripped back version of Robyn's Every Heartbeat off the new Chilled record, and she reprised her rendition of Moloko's Sing It Back from last year's show.
If we're being critical, then if you have seen these guys drop by previously ithen you will have seen big bits of the set before - especially the opening visuals set to Fatboy Slim's Right Here Right Now. And the smaller crowd than previously perhaps paid testament to that. The middle section, too, meandered a bit and the pace kept getting shut down by slipping in slower numbers including on odd cameo from vocalist Robert Owens.
But there's no doubting the technical excellence of what they've put together. A huge finale featuring a pumping string of tracks started with Energy 52's Café Del Mar and went through a double Faithless helping of God Is A DJ (while pictures flitted across the screens of the various artists Tong has worked with) and a beautifully extended Insomnia that had everyone bouncing.
Swedish House Mafia's One really went off, before everyone piled on for a huge dance off at the front for The Prodigy's Out Of Space including a touching tribute to the late Keith Flint.
We always try to keep these reviews fairly succinct, so the fact there was too much to pack in, and we've barely mentioned so many big tracks, says all you need to know about the tightness of the set.
