.: ShaolinTiger - Kung-Fu Geekery :.

If you've been reading my blog for some time you might know I'm a fan of Tiesto - I went to see him last time he was here which was back in 2006 at Sepang (DJ Tiesto - Live at Sepang Malaysia!) so I definitely won't miss the chance to see him head over here for his Elements of Life tour.

He was here for Freedom 08 at Admiral Marina in Port Dickson - the same place I went for that crappy Recharge 3: R3velation - The Aftermath in 2005.

I didn't meet any blog reading fans this time but I did see Adeline and Nadia from MDG!

Yes yes...3 years isn't been long I went to my first rave in 1994 for my 16 birthday so yeah work that out.

We reached the front gate around 10:15pm....omg look at the queue, lucky we pre-bought our tickets weeks ago at Axcess in 1-U.

We got inside around 10:45pm - not tooooo bad. Seen as though it was quite late the German duo of DJ Bossi & Nic Chagall commonly known as Cosmic Gate were already rocking the show and the place was pretty packed.

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So on new years eve there was a big party at Mid Valley City called MidZone Countdown 2008.

Fireworks, dancers, drummers, good djs and a bunch of friends - sounds like fun eh? Well it was!

We got there quite early, to collect our media tags and to avoid the jam - strangely federal highway was empty and parking was a breeze. I have a feeling the whole world went into KL city to get jammed up against each other in the various street parties.

Our good friend Dabido was there from across the ocean - he arrived around the same time as us. Dabido and the Laydees.

And yeah someone has a bigger belly than me!

It was pretty quiet when we first arrived - as we were pretty early but people started rolling in soon after.

Things started hotting up with the sexy dancers than came on (They were rather obscene!).

And the crowd started building up - with the atmosphere too. DJ Rowan was playing when we first got there and he was excellent! Rocking us with real quality dance hits from the 80's and 90's. It really got everyone moving.

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So it's almost xmas - just a few days left to go...and of course rapidly after that is New Year! And the biggest party night of the year - New Years Eve..but what to do, where to go? Where's the party at?

This year the big one is MidZone Countdown 2008, held at Mid Valley City so there's plenty of space..no cramped clubs!

Can you believe 2007 is over already and it's time to usher a new year in? It's been insane!

Anyway for MidZone the headline acts are DJ Stoneface & Terminal (Germany), DJ Matthew White (Hungary) and VJ Sort (Kagawa, Japan) with some local guys like DJ Gabriel, Jungle Jerry and DJ Nesh.

The highlight of the event is the intricate fireworks display, specially choreographed to the pulsating music of the performing DJs. It will be produced by Global 2000 Sdn. Bhd., the official organiser of Malaysia International Fireworks Competition 2007 at Putrajaya, making the show at the MidZone Countdown 2008 a showcase of fireworks artistry at its best!

Hope I can take my camera in!

So I'll see you there?

Date: 31st December 2007
Time: From 7pm-3am.
Ticket Sales: www.ticketpro.com.my or call 03-7880 7999
Ticket Price (Pre-Sale): RM75
Ticket Price (Door Sale): RM100
(All tickets are inclusive of 3 F&B Vouchers).

You can also win tickets and backstage passes here:

1. http://www.kimberlycun.com/2007/12/14/midzone-countdown-2008-for-the-win/

2. http://www.xanga.com/aNgeLic_keLz/631821714/item.html

3. http://jenifur84.diaryland.com/071215_66.html

4. http://thaiboxingirl.blogspot.com/2007/12/free-tickets-and-one-backstage-pass-to.html

5. http://www.xes.cx/MT/archives/2007/12/midzone_countdown_2008_the_bou.html

Ah finally! A party I really enjoyed. So the story is, I was invited to a product launch by Heineken who are launching new "sub-zero" bottled beer in Malaysia, their sub-zero draft has already been installed in 30 locations through Malaysia since September this year and now they are launching new Sub-zero beer chillers for bottled beer.

I was a bit annoyed as it was 7pm on a Monday night in the middle of KL...during the season when it rains a lot during early evening - just great!

I got there about 7.45pm and queued for some draft, good stuff. It really does taste better when it's extra cold - we were upstairs for a while at the bar whilst waiting for the launch to kick of downstairs in Velvet Underground.

So we headed down, there was ice everywhere, huge green blocks of ice filled with bottles of Heineken - good stuff!

The place was fairly well packed.

Joey G was the emcee (as he always seems to be nowadays) and the thing kicked off with a video about how the beer is best served extra cold, then a delivery by the regional director for Heineken - sounded like an Aussie.

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A while back I went to some 'Photo Contest' at Bed in Asian Heritage row down in KL - I don't go to KL often....so I had to drag myself down there.

But I was supporting Kim Ong - so it was ok I briefly posted about it just after the event, but with the server crash and some other stuff I've been a bit hectic since then.

We were there to take some pictures of the Star Celeb contestants in a clubbing environment, challenging for both us and the contestants.

There was 3 sections basically - Pose, Groove and Chill being a fixed pose on the stage then 30 seconds of emcee time, then dancing inside the club, then hanging out respectively.

It was pretty tough with odd lighting and extremely low ambient light conditions. Plus it was my first time shooting in a clubbing environment, trying to get the settings right was interesting to say the least.

Kim is very natural on the mic.

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Yah it's that time of the year again! Speedzone is coming and the Speedzone tour 2007.

It's going to be hitting Zouk KL on the 20th of October with some serious headline acts. Matt Darey and Seb Fontaine rocking it hard from my homeland, two of the DJ's I really enjoy.

The rest of the line-up is pretty decent too with Princess Superstar, Gareth Emery & GaryDJ.

Zouk Mainroom: DJ Joey G of Channel [V] fame will get the party started and set the pace for UK’s favourite DJ Matt Darey, a chameleon of sound whose productions have been a major influence to the industry today. Next up is DJ Seb Fontaine who has made his mark since his residencies at CREAM and BBC Radio1. Last but not least presenting trance wonder boy Gareth Emery (ranked #34 in the DJ Mag Top 100 Poll), tipped by Paul van Dyk as the artist to breakthrough in 2007, who will take you to the finish line!

Velvet Underground: Presenting the one and only female DJ for the night, Princess Superstar who is renowned worldwide for her mash-ups between hip-hop, electro and rock. She has performed with N.E.R.D, Bjork, Z-Trip and KRS-1 and her remake of “Exceeder – Mason vs. Princess Superstar” debuted at #3 on the UK pop charts!

The Loft: Bounce to the funky house beats of GaryDJ, an accomplished DJ who has remixed tracks for the likes of Jamiroquai, Destiny’s Child and Maxwell, followed by a kaleidoscope of sounds delivered by DJ Jeremy Boon, resident DJ of Velvet Underground Singapore.

Terrace Bar: Chill out to Zouk resident DJs while taking a break from non-stop partying and try your skills at the party’s unique interactive zones.

They are giving away 1,000 FREE tickets too on the website for the first 1,000 people to register.

http://www.speedzonetour.com

(Beginning 20 September 2007. Ticket availability is on a first-come, first-serve basis.)

Alternatively, be as early as possible and purchase your ticket at the door for only RM40 (for Zouk Mainroom + The Loft + Terrace Bar), with two complimentary drinks.

For ticket info, visit http://www.zoukclub.com.my

Tickets for Velvet will be sold separately and the price has not yet been released.

IMPORTANT: The parties are open to partygoers 21 and above ONLY, all ticket collections and purchases will be strictly dependant on the display of a valid photo ID. Velvet underground will only be open to those OVER 25.

Are you going?

If so I'll see you there!

Well you can tell how good this event was, it took me 6 months to bring myself to look at the pictures and sort them out, upload them and blog about it.

Transit Sound of Smoke was quite possibly the worst rave to ever take place, it wasn't publicised - no one had heard of it and there was a massive one a few days earlier on the 29th at Sunway which everyone knew about (Velocity KL).

The official low down on the event was Transit: Sound Of Smoke @ Sepang International Circuit, KL - Cars, dance music, the great outdoors.

Yeah right? Dubbed as Malaysia’s first-ever high speed drifting event, Transit is the amalgamation of the Saturday Night Drift events held at the Speedway Plus Circuit Elite Highway.

Expect to see over 50 expert and 150 novice drivers burn some serious rubber on Sepang’s tracks.

The drift event begins at 3pm and was to carry on for 50 hours of non-stop music and drift as some kind of stupid record in the name of 50 years of independence, isn't that tune getting a little well worn?

We were planning to party to DJs Jungle Jerry, Groovedoctor, the lovely Desire, DJ Love and WllythKd as they took us on a musical drift with sounds ranging from deep sexy tribal house, progressive, melodic and hard trance and everything in between. (Source)

We were buzzin for a rave.

Check out the pumping crowd as we approached.

Looks fairly reasonable right?

Well it just got worse as we got closer..

There was only about 12 people there, so the whole partying on down thing didn't really happen.

Well seriously I'd say maybe 250-300 people...certainly not the billed 10,000.

We spent most of our time taking pictures....of each other taking pictures of each other, yeah something like that - there wasn't exactly a lot of photographic subjects.

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A trio of videos as requested, after the jump.

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Well Malaysia Boleh for once..

They got DJ Tiesto (Tijs Verwest) to come here, just knocked off number 1 in the world...labelled the 'Pit Party' (it was in a car park NEAR the F1 circuit).

DJ Tiesto is arguably the world’s top DJ over the past four years, and although he did lose his No.1 ranking in DJ Mag’s Top 100 ranking to Germany’s Paul van Dyk just recently, he did hold it for three consecutive years and still holds the top ranking in other lists such as The DJ List.

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Yeah nothing like some frozen Smirnoff Black to start off the night..

Ah, traffic Jam on NKVE at 9pm? I wonder why...perhaps the 20,000 odd people going to see Tiesto. Drove up alone as it's nearer my place than the rest, met Suan, KY, Paul, Fox, Voices, Janice and FA there.

There was an F1 car and some F1 girls, it was afterall a 'Pit Party'.

I got there about 8.45, it was pretty packed, the car park still had plenty of spaces though so that was good. There was some crappy local DJ playing with 'Milk' on his/her shirt, made a few slip-ups. Apparently the DJ before was very good, got there a bit late though.

There was some dodgy Lion dance before Tiesto came on (Which was supposed to be at 10pm SHARP, but due to Malaysian Time...he came on at 10.35).

During the night there was also some Bollywood kind of dance, wow really multicultural Malaysia eh?

This is my first video entry, woo!

I didn't hear a couple of my favourite songs (Silence featuring Sarah McLachlan and his rendition of Barber's Adagio for Strings). Perhaps they played them after I left, I did hear quite a lot of Just Be (including the title track sung live) and Parade of the Athletes.

The place was packed and Tiesto was of course in that circular light flashing thingy, kind of his trademark (you'll know it if you've seen him live before or watched the concert DVD).

The Suan was loving it! Can't beat a happy Suan tbh.

The Paul Tan chose the wrong colour for his shirt..

Kawaii FA.

The AV was amazing with cool video in time with the music, fireworks now and then and a really impressive laser show. Apparently the VJ was one of Tiesto's guys, the guy working the decks had the most enourmous stomach, looked like 11 months pregnant.

During those famous songs and crescendos the whole crowd went wild, it shows there are a lot of real Tiesto fans in Malaysia that are familiar with his songs, not just random ravers.

The Live singer was pretty good, but she definately wasn't the one that recorded Just Be originally, she kind of butchered it.

The atmosphere was fantastic with the crowd jumping, the laser show, the smoke, the banging trance, reminds me of raving in my younger years.

I met some random fans like "Hi are you ShaolinTiger, wow I read your blog every day!", which was nice! Here they are:

Hi fans!

It got busier and busier and towards the end there was just an Ocean of people in every direction, there was about 20,000+ in the end, we were somewhere in the middle of the middle. Ran into a few friends here and there too, some others have retired so weren't about.

Tiesto, he's the man!

I have more videos, if anyone wants to see them I'll upload to Youtube

FA - the only one who can dance ALL FREAKING NIGHT.

I left at about 2+ to avoid the traffic, thankfully was smooth sailing back home, it could have been a bit cooler like in Genting. But it was an awesome night! Maybe Paul Van Dyk next?!

More videos by request here.

So duly off I went to Port Dickon after a call out from TBG and pleading from FireAngel..

We headed up pretty early around 3pm to avoid the traffic and to get our tickets without having to wrestly for them like at Zoukfest last time.

The traffic was already horrible, and I took a long ass way following God's directions all the way through Puchong, then past CyberJaya finally reaching Port Dickson after about 135km..

The highway was bad, hardly moving, people were resorting to using the hard shoulder..

We got there early though and grabbed our tickets at a reasonable 40RM each (including 2 drinks and a free gift, which was actually functional for once).

we were starving after that so we headed to the Pasar Malan to feast on...burgers, lots of coconut juice, deep fried chicken bread, popiah goreng, fried chicken and other stuff which I don't even know the name of..

As we went in early, just after sunset we could park inside, in the best car park in the world ever...NOT.

I pity the people at the front, their cars had literally 2 inches of dust on when we left, mine was pretty bad and it was at the back.

I did a massive wheelspin on the way in just to create some haze and make the KL people feel at home *evil grin*.

We were greeted at the front by the Recharge Ferris Wheel.

They had a huge video screen next to the ferris wheel, I mean huge like 40ft high, each booth had a camera in it and the images showed on the screen, kinda cool, a lot of people didn't notice at first..but they they did, so there was people stripping..

And people pulling stupid faces..

It was pretty quiet when we went in, and technically it's not really a beach, it's just kind of sandy..

The music was good though.

There was a nice chill out area by the sea with loads of fans and comfy laid back chairs where you could relax and get a hand massage..I mean wtf, it's not my hands that are tired thanks honey.

Couldn't you think of something better to massage? I could suggest a few things..

The Melbourne Shufflers were back, there were 15+ of them I guess I'd say 2-3 were actually good.

BTW we were doing something like the shuffle in old skool raves back in 1994 before it even had a name, GO PRODIGY GO ALTERN8!

I was touting my trendy water bottle pouch thing that I got as a free gift, and wearing my kickass "I Punch People" T-shirt.

God, Saint and FA came around 11.30pm...a bit late..

By 12 the music turned shit and it was abso-fucking-lutely packed. Johan Gielsen or whoever the fuck he is was the poorest excuse for a DJ I've ever heard, he did like 3 minute build up (which wasn't even exciting or uplifting or actually even vaguely interesting) then the beat DIDN'T EVEN MATCH. GO BACK TO DJ SCHOOL LOSER.

Then he just played shitty repititive dull techno-ish german shit, not quite gabba but not interesting in any way either.

Before 12 it was rocking, after 12, when Gielsen took the decks, even though it was ram packed, virtually no-one was dancing, before 12 the whole place was rocking. Good one, you obviously have no clue how to work the crowd..

But it was freaking packed, I mean seriously packed, there was no more tarmac left to dance on and sand is pretty hard to dance on, you end up digging yourself into a hole.

People, people everywhere.

The second arena was a bit sloppy with their music...at one point they played some chart 'hip-hop' song, then they played Josh Wink - Higher State of Conciousness, then they played Nirvana, then they started playing some weird trip-hop, I like that music, but how the fuck do you dance to it.

Headed off about 2am, got bored, tired and was hungry..

Went straight back got to Misai around 3.15am, whacked a burger and some Indomee and was truly satisfied, then home for a well deserved sleep.

I think the others left shortly after..I wonder if FA even got to dance.

Yes, I went to R3velation and all I got was this lousy arm band..

Zoukfest at Genting was much better, better music too, I heard Scott Project rocked the house, but I'd had enough by then, he came on at 3am.. It's better to be cold than hot, at least at Genting if you kept dancing or had a jumper it was nice.

In PD if you just stood still there were so many people it got sweaty..

Oh well, worth a try

I got recognised twice too, which was kinda cool and odd...one guy from Penang who doesn't have a blog and a girl selling glowsticks who had her blog URL on the back of her t-shirt, I thought it was Tilla but it wasn't it was:

http://tilia.blogdrive.com/

She took a pic with me, perhaps it'll get to her blog, or she'll send it to me, who knows.

Anyway I'm obviously a minor celebrity...or something!

Gallery is here: Recharge 3: R3velation 2005 Port Dickson Pictures