This year, zoukout marks its eleventh year as one of the biggest music festival in Asia with both audiences and performers coming in from around the world. Months before the actual event, dance music fanatics (like me) would’ve started anticipating the release of the line-up that the zouk organization prepared for this year’s ZoukOut. As much as this year’s line-up was not entirely as juicy as last year’s, I wasn’t disappointed.
This year we saw the debut of Avicii (my sole reason for attending zoukout this year) and Chuckie in Singapore, the amazing pair work of Defected Records Founder – Simon Dunmore & the Drum Warrior – Shovell as well as the ever-awesome trance legend Armin Van Buuren who returned for his fourth ZoukOut.
Besides the Stage-A headliners, Zouk also brought in some amazing artistes such as Jamaican-infused French house music producer Bob Sinclar, Grammy award-winning American House music DJ Roger Sanchez, detroit-based techno music producer Carl Craig, Baltimore’s house DJ Karizma, electronic pop band Ladytron as well as Brazilian electronic producer Gui Boratto to rock the Stage-B out.
There were also Stage-C where local resident DJs such as Eclipse, Ghetto, Mambo Jambo and London’s turntabalist DJs Scratch Perverts rocked the night away. All in all, it was an incredible night of electronic dance music that enraptured the audiences right throughout Siloso Beach, Sentosa.
To start, the gates opened two hours earlier at 6pm (instead of the usual 8pm). Lockers were placed at the emerald pavilion, medics and an abundant amount of staff were all getting prepped up for the big night. The entire Siloso Beach was basically transformed into a carnival with booths from Singtel, Havaianas, HTC, Citibank, Heineken and many more.
It was really good that the stages were placed quite far apart from each other because despite having multiple stages for the many different acts, the sound that were coming out from the stereos were not interfered so there weren’t any sound disturbances. I was mostly (if not entirely) glued to Stage A and may I just say that the sound quality was pretty awesome. It was loud but not massive nor was it annoying.
Also, unlike many events and most clubs where the LED screens behind the DJs are basically flat and one dimensional, the LED screens at Stage A were staggered and pieced up which gave a very 2 dimensional feel in which the entire stage looked a lot more spectacular. Come to think of it, the staggering LED screens along with dry ice fogs, confettis and whatnot truly hyped everything up especially during the headliners hit tracks.
I can’t say for all but the bar staff that I encountered were well-mannered and polite and the securities (despite looking somewhat fierce) were very smiley and helpful. They were all about making sure the entire event went well and that troublemakers were brought to justice and I know that because throughout the 14 hours of partying that night, I’ve seen it all. Rowdy, aggressive, pushy people and downright drunkards, but never once did the securities not attend to our plea for help. At points where the crowd got almost unimaginable, the securities even took the initiative to ask if we were doing fine, which I was extremely grateful for.
To sum it all, I think the event was a huge success not solely because of the great line-up but also because of the zouk’s management team for doing such a marvelous job in the planning and execution and finally, for having such a wonderful team of all rounded staff who were dedicated and motivated at their job to make the entire event a truly memorable for everyone that attended.
To conclude, the party was well-worth my time, my energy and my money. Sure enough, I’m looking forward to the next Zoukout already.
Stereomayhem 