Marc's Public Blog - Clubbing

2025/03/21 Gareth Emery back at Bill Graham for Laser City (aka Laserface) Cyberpunk

π 2025-03-21 01:01 in Clubbing

So, every time I went to see a laser show, from someone else, including Gareth's Laser City shows (and honestly I preferred "laserface" to "laser city" as a name), my reaction was unfortuantely always "it was nice, but laserface 2018 was (so) much better. Nothing has come close since then". Until today.

Ok, Bill Graham is a very nice venue, so that helped, but this time was the first time that Gareth brought more lasers than 2018 and made a great show out of it, and it was super impressive. This is now the new benchmark as the best laser show ever!

warning, lasers will be in use, haha

Arrived early to meet friends and attempt to get a good seat for the show. To be honest, the 2 opening DJs didn't play anything to write home about, it was burning time for the next 3H until Gareth would start. I'm sure they're not even bad DJs, but I'm guessing they had clear instructions not to shine too much, bummer...

So it was a good time to meet friends and take pictures :)

maybe not visible, but I also had the new prototype of my thinner and flexible LED outfit

The 2 DJs I had never heard about before: Robot Sunrise and Vision V:

sold out!

and then the countdown for Gareth

And finally the real sho started at 22:20:

a lot more vertical lasers:

but I prefered this

One treat like previous shows, is having Annabel join and sing, and this time as per my previous feedback, they got the lighting right so that you could see them on stage, which was another nice improvemnt:

did Gareth manage to play live plus mix live by himself? If so, super impressive

The cyberpunk storyline was a nice addition:

The lasers got even prettier around the end:

The whole show was 90mn, it didn't last that long, but it was beyond excellent. Gareth didn't play as much trance as he did in 2018, but I didn't expect he would, times have changed and 7 years later trance is not loved by as many people anymore. On the plus side, I did like the music selection he picked, so that was all good.
The one question the engineer in me has, is whether the entire show was a playback performance on a pre-recorded track that was perfectly synchronized to the lasers, or whether Gareth found a way to play some, or all of that music live and still stay perfectly synchronized with the lasers (with Annabel also singing live and on key, which is always challenging in a loud concert environment). What do you think?
My answer is honestly I think it may have been live, at least parts of it, but I don't overly care either way, the show was flawless and really enjoyable, which is what matters.

well done indeed