As of late, the current raving generation have been getting somewhat annoyed and irritated with the underage, 16-18 market flooding the rave scene, and this tends to impact on this new generation when they are finally old enough to enter “real” raves, and are often looked down upon.  Seeing the gap in the market, the late UTR (Under the Radar) and NRG (New Raving Generation) set up a new line of clubs, designed to attract a slightly younger audience  of 16-18 years of age, to detract them from the hustle and bustle of the main raving scene, and somewhat build them up slowly to the level.

Such an event took place on the 31st of May at Stourbridge Academy (Located near Birmingham). Hosted by Stefanie Ashley, NRG had a recent shake up, requiring everyone attending to provide some sort of identification on the front door; this was met with great relief as younger ravers could no longer enter the club, allowing people to relax. And needless to say, people were shocked, as many were turned away at the door; personally I think it’s a good thing that youngsters such as 14 and 15 are not allowed into the club, as this causes confusion and hesitation among ravers to approach anyone in general.

After experiencing a few of this events first hand, I had something to compare it to, and in all honesty, the night was good and thoroughly enjoyed myself, at a fraction of the price of larger raves, with little compromise on venue size of star names, I think NRG certainly on that aspect have it cracked.

What first hit me on entering the rave was the good quality sound of the speaker systems, very little or no stammer or interruption was evident. I was not able to get a listen to every type of music genre, but from dubstep, to funky, to house, to grime; the speakers seemed to cope with it fairly well, actually allowing you to enjoy the music.

Now the DJ who went by the name of “DJ Craig”, yes, very creative I know, was actually pretty good, dropping out some good mainstream tracks such as Nero-Guilt and DJ Fresh- Gold Dust, now for a Grime fan like myself, obviously doesn’t fill the tank very much, but taking into account the sort of thing young people have experienced prior have been school discos, the difference is, for the most part, easy to recognise.

There weren’t masses of people sitting around the edges of the club or people standing around, they actually went for it and that’s what I personally like to see about a club. Now, if I’m being brutally honest, at times when songs such as “Rihanna – Only girl in the world” were being played, it brought a cringe to my face, as I’m not really sure how someone is supposed to rave to a song like that, people go to these things to be treated as an adult, and with child disco songs such as that, I feel somewhat defeats the object.

As for the lighting of the main room, I am pleased to say I was impressed, there were two large rectangular heat-lights above the DJ, which when activated, were shortly followed by smoke machines in abundance and other rotating mini-spot lights, strobes and bubble machines. Describing it makes it sound puny and inadequate but anymore would have resulted in people either being blinded, or distracted from the one thing that raving is all about, having a good time.

The upstairs room I’m afraid to say however, was where the real disappointment was, considering it was meant to be a DnB room, to walk in to stammery, baseless Dubstep/DnB/Grime really did little for me, the DJ, who failed to introduce himself, lowered the volume and changed track far too quickly for my liking and was a real let down. As mentioned, the speaker system was very poor; the lighting was poor with little going on, with these two combining factors, as the night went on the room bordered on being empty or close to empty and as soon as it gained some life, it was almost all of the time took out by the DJs.

The only real positive I am able to draw from the room is that when a request was made by ravers, 9/10 it was listened to, this was especially helpful to me, as I was able to get me fix of grime for the night and go a bit crazy. But for a place where underground music listeners are supposed to thrive and enjoy, this was far from the truth.

As Josh Roberts, the main headline act was unable to attend due to a fault with his car, another DJ replaced him at the start of the rave for a while, again failed to announce his name and in credit to him, he was alright, most of the music chosen was fairly good and was able to get the crowd going for the most.   Now to conclude, for a 16-18 event, it was a good, bordering on very good attempt to get it right, I feel that there is certainly a market to exploit there, but whether anyone has been able to do it consistently, week in, week out I am unsure.

With these some events, I walk away from some thinking that I’d had a really good night out, others thinking it was average and others thinking “was it really worth me going out?”, now in regards to this particular rave, It was one of the better ones in my opinion, the music choice was far better than some of the others, and in credit to “DJ Craig” the last 30 minutes of the rave were actually pretty impressive, to the point of getting the crowd energetic to the point of having to be dispersed and broken up for moshing, so on that front, it was a success.

On others however, such as sometimes the kid-disco feel sometimes, it is something that really has to be addressed, and needs to be sorted out if this loophole in the market is truly going to be manipulated, people have to get to the event, and pay to get home, and they are not going to pay for a disco. Sort It Out Nrg! Another thing i feel that could be addressed is the incorporation of rave MC’s, or other acts to make people want to come, I understand it costs to pay for the acts, but i strongly feel that the money coming in from people to see them will outweigh that of the artist. UTR did this very successfully with the incorporation of artist such as P Money, Lethal Bizzle, D Double E, Tinie Tempa and many more, I feel NRG are inclined to follow suit.

Rating-7

Reviewed By @Matt_MOG