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We headed down to Nic Fanciulli and Joris Voorn's La Familia at Ushuaia on Saturday, which will be teaming up with ANTS for two more Saturdays until taking over the club on Sundays in September.
Heading down to Ushuaia in the early evening, the temperature was particular intense, even at 6pm. Luckily they were handing out ANTS fans at the door, so I was greeted to sea of scantily clad revelers vigorously wafting themselves in attempts to cool down and I promptly took up a prime position by a fan, which really turned out to be a godsend.
In the early stages, we were warmed up at the small circular DJ booth at the far end, which gives the start of the event a more relaxed pool party kind of atmosphere. Secondcity was at the helm serving up some jacking tracks before settling in to some rolling, bouncy, tech-house fare.
Always intent on providing an all-encompassing party experience, ANTS dancers appeared and created a circle in the crowd of party-goers dressed in their customary all-black attire and adorned in feathers and goggles. One of the performers took to balancing a series of chairs on his face before another group of performers burst into the circle wearing black Lycra morph suits and started break-dancing. It was eye-catching to say the least.
Matthias Tanzmann followed on the decks with his tougher, more underground brand of tech house – guiding the party into proper party territory as darkness set in. As good as daytime partying can be, night time is always when the true actions begins to happen.
As if the party was split in two, we moved from the chilled intimate daytime atmosphere to the heady night-time spirit rapidly. The crowd quickly doubled in size as the night's curators hit the stage.
We certainly weren't short of anything to look at, at this collaboration between ANTS and La Familia. Dancers in all-black PVC spiked outfits, huge feathers and frills appeared on the stage and in the middle of the crowd as the revelers fed off Nic Fanciulli and Joris Voorn’s bouncing selections including Patrick Topping’s ubiquitous hit ‘Forget’ and remixes of tracks such as ‘Benediction’ and MK’s ‘Always’. The size of the crowd really highlighted the combined pulling power of ANTS, La Familia, Fanciulli and Voorn, as the masses expressed how content they were through enthusiastic hip-shaking and fist-pumping moves.
The sound had an arena-like quality to it: vast and echoing throughout the huge venue space, giving us an innate sense of the size of the venue and the sound track fit the situation perfectly with big room tech-house sounds infectiously emanating from the speakers.
In terms of production, ANTS and La Familia went all out, and the levels of effort Ushuaia put into the production are nothing short of astonishing. The giant LED ant head the focal point of the stage, the usual blasts of confetti, fire and CO2 were in full effect, more so than you’d find anywhere else on the island – there’s certainly no expense spared.
The thing about Ushuaia is that if you’re into the music and the artists that are playing, you’re not going to find a better venue production-wise to see these artists. ANTS continues to represent an alternative sound to EDM at Ushuaia with huge popularity, and La Familia will no doubt inject something a little different to Ushuaia calendar once they take over on Sundays in September.
Listen to Nic Fanciulli on Pulse Radio.
