Review: Gareth Emery Live at Governors Island NYC 8.4.2012

Governors Beach Club was certainly the spectacle Saturday night. If you’ve been, you know it’s one of the summer’s hottest party venues. The gentle wind blows from the East River and the beautiful Manhattan skyline sets the mood. It’s picturesque background for sure, for an energetic EDM show. Saturday was special because English producer and DJ, Gareth Emery brought his live project to NYC, broadcasting his two and a half hour set to the interwebs for the entire world to experience. Thousands of young kids were dancing and enjoying the sounds of Emery with supporting acts Zack Roth, Jerome Isma-Ae, Blake Jarrell and Ben Gold. I showed up shortly before 8:30pm, Emery’s on set time, but heard good things from the openers (Zack Roth seems have his own residency at Governor’s Beach Club, opening the last few concerts and I have heard nothing but good things about his sets from fellow EDM Insiders).

The good is that Emery can get a crowd fired up and sustain that energy for hours on end. Opening up with Alex Sonata’s Kansai, Emery set the bar high for the evening’s energy levels. Ravers went absolutely crazy while red-hot tracks such as Emery’s recent single, The Saga, Pryda’s Allein, Porter’s summer anthem Language, and Zedd’s remix of Breakin’ a Sweat. My favorite was the surprising interjection of Darude’s Sandstorm into his set. I simply cannot remember the last time a DJ dropped that massive bomb in a set, being more than 10 years old. The bad, is that Emery could have given NYC some more diversity. Emery has been pushing more and more towards electro-house and sadly the amount of trance in his set was minimal. I needed and wanted more trance in the set, and wasn’t getting it in return. Perhaps it’s my fault completely for seeing Emery so many times! More trance-based tracks that were played included Armin van Buuren’s We are Here to Make Some Noise as well as the Ben Gold remix of Tokyo, and Rock This by Paul van Dyk. The end of Gareth’s set in NYC wouldn’t be complete without his epic track, Concrete Angel to close the night, leaving us all wanting more.

If you weren’t able to make it to Governors Island over the weekend, relive the experience from home with the live stream on Gareth Emery’s YouTube channel.

Article by: Michael Arnold