Disorientation

WCPR hosted ‘Disorientation: An EDM Showcase’ last Friday, which brought three DJ/producers to the Babbio Atrium for four hours of trance on Friday night. These headliners of the night were Jacob Henry, Zack Roth, and Monoverse. The event was free for Stevens students and $5 for guests. WCPR’s staff treated guests with drinks and desserts from the “mock”tail bar. Every twenty minutes, Pat Maclane, one of the WCPR event coordinators, complemented the festivities by throwing tee shirts to crowd members from the stage.

Jacob Henry was the first DJ to take the stage, playing a 90-minute trance and progressive house set. The set started with an energetic, rhythmic beat, eventually settling into a mellow sound by the end of its run. He was backed by an array of cylindrical glowing lights, providing interesting visuals to complement the dancing. Henry manages the Silk Royal electronic music label, which he describes as a “club-oriented” branch of Silk Music. “We sign artists from all-around the world and stay active in the underground music scene,” he said. Henry also hosts the Silk Royal Showcase weekly radio show.

After Henry’s set, New York-based producer Zack Roth took the stage at 8:38 p.m., opening with a high-intensity electro-house number to jumpstart activity on the dancefloor. Following the opener was a mostly progressive house-based set that gravitated towards more electro-bangers around the hour-mark before closing around 10:00 p.m..

Following Roth was Monoverse. Monoverse gained notoriety in the trance scene earlier this summer by making two consecutive appearances on ‘A State of Trance’, a radio show hosted by legendary producer Armin Van Buuren. According to Stanley Switalski, an event coordinator for Disorientation, the show gets thousands of submissions. Being featured at all in the show, let alone twice, is “really rare,” according to Switalski.

This was WCPR’s second year hosting Disorientation. Last year, the featured guests were also Zack Roth and Jacob Henry. General attitudes about the event seemed mostly positive, with attendees saying they “liked it” and thought it was “pretty cool,” though one student remarked that the music was “not very danceable.” WCPR encourages those interested in the organization to attend their weekly meetings held on Wednesday at 9:30 p.m. in the basement of Jacobus. Tatyana Fedorenko and Andrew Waldron, members of the WCPR Executive Board commented on the event, “Disorientation was a really great event to showcase our equipment and talent from the trance/house scene. There was a great turnout of over 200 undergraduate students. A lot of people had fun, especially with the T-shirt giveaways and we were more than happy to bring this event to Stevens.”