At Dawn They Sleep

This weekend saw me at Zoukout, the annual dance music festival at Sentosa beach. Two words. It rocks.

The first thing I noticed was a live performance by Electrico, a Singaporean indie-rock group. It was an unexpected gem of a performance. The singer was frantic, the guitars were stuttering and the combined effect was electric. After a long time resigning myself to synthetic Top 40 songs performed by talented but ultimately predictable nightclub bands, it was a stunning surprise. Later I was to listen to another great local band, Plain Sunset. The music was great, and went down nicely with the frontman's self-deprecating humor.

The next thing that hit me was the prices of the drinks. The boys and girls at Zouk had clearly decided that they were not going to poop the party. At $6 a pop, they were out to give everyone a full opportunity to get wet in the throat. Which was just as well, because it was going to be a night that would call for a lot of Red Bull.

After that I spent time going from one sound stage to the other (they had four of them). The hip-hop stage was a disappointment. I was looking forward to DJ Jazzy Jeff (he of Fresh Prince a.k.a. Will Smith fame), but he turned out to have run out of invention. Velvet was mostly good and occasionally great. And the live stage was, as I mentioned above, a delightful Easter egg.

But it was the main stage that blew me away.




When I got there the headline set by Ferry Corsten had already begun.



Listening to him work the mixing table was a sensory delight. It wasn't just that he had a brilliant ear for beat or that he struck just the right balance of melody and noise. What was truly amazing was his sense of timing. He controlled the tempo of the set with delicacy and assurance. He was pulling strings and our neighborhood of thousands could only follow. And then there was the light.

It was mesmerizing.

We stood under a ceiling of electric green clouds a foot above our heads. We moved between lasers that lanced amongst us where we pounded the sand under our feet. We watched as a wall of red and yellow light erupted in incandescent bursts.

Until finally dawn crept in, first purple, then grey, then bright blue. So we blinked our eyes and gathered our feet and went softly to bed.