At the 21st of February 2015 Armin van Buuren celebrated the 700th edition of his A State Of Trance podcast and radioshow with a massive show called A State Of Trance Festival Utrecht in the Jaarbeurs with 32.000 visitors and not one but 2 mainstages and even 2 extra areas being the Who’s afraid of 138 (beats per minute)? stage and a talent-stage. The event itself was a cooperation of 3 parties: ASOT tourcrew, Armada & Alda Events.
The line-up of the whole night (8 pm till 7 am) was as follows:
As you can instantly see the biggest names in Trance worldwide were invited to this spectacular night. The most striking detail of the lineup would be Armin van Buuren himself performing 3 sets of all at least 1 hour long and also doing the radioshow, that’s intense!
At about 7 pm we were able to enter the event via entrance D (guests, press & crew) with our guest-tickets. We directly noticed how incredibly huge the location was and decided to first of all check out the mainstage 1 since Armin was going to perform there from 8 pm till 9 pm (warming-up set). It was an amazing sight to see the at that point totally empty mainstage which had many lasers, c2o & confetti canons and a huge LED screen ready to get everybody into a state of Trance. Armin obviously started the warming-up set with the ASOT 700/ASOT Festival anthem which was accompanied by a beautiful intro and visuals. As we definitely expected this track managed to set the mood for an amazing night. After Armin’s set we went to check out the new radiodome (looking like some sort of spaceship) which included a silent disco and the ability to actually see Armin & Ruben de Ronde doing the radioshow and hearing it in your headphones; in my view a really nice touch! While we there we heard the 2nd set of the mainstage 1: Ilan Bluestone vs Jerome Isma-ae which was mostly a build-up set with some nice euphoric vibes. As for the artists playing at the second mainstage I had looked forward to Mark Sixma because of his unique style and he definitely didn’t disappoint. Since we got in at about 7 pm we decided to have a drink at one of the many available bars throughout the Jaarbeurs. The price for tokens was quite normal & the quality and quantity of the drink was fine. While walking back to the first main stage we passed through the Who’s afraid of 138 stage and what I heard sounded really good. Unfortunately with a big location and 4 areas and the fact that it’s impossible to split yourself in 2 pieces we had to make choices what to check out and what to miss out on. Andrew Bayer’s set featured some classical trance tracks which were really enjoyable. At that point it was almost midnight and all 4 areas were extremely full, that’s a huge compliment for Armin and Trance in general, because where do you see that also these days? Cosmic Gate was up next in our schedule and they probably played one of the best sets of the night, their style could be considered a little less ‘’emotional trance’’ than you see often in the build-up and went more to the style you see on the main stage of big festivals. Obviously that was received really well by the audience. After drinking some water and walking around the location a bit we went to check out the second set of Armin van Buuren, again on the first main stage. This set was absolutely amazing. The atmosphere was absolutely wonderful, you could see all the different flags of different nationalities waving in the air (great music unites us all) and people definitely had anticipated the most for Armin’s sets. I have already mentioned before how awesome the visuals were but at this set it became even better. Laserbeams following the directions of Armin’s arms, confetti, fire, it was all there and the synchronization with the music was wonderful. Of course Armin played great tracks like a wonderful mashup of ping pong with bigfoot, phanta rhei (w/ Mark Sixma joining him on stage) and I even recognized some new Above and Beyond tracks. Unfortunately at about a quarter past three we had to go to our hotel since we had a very busy weekend combining ASOT Festival with 2 days of Dancefair which also took place at the Jaarbeurs in Utrecht.
Conclusion
Well, Armin van Buuren said it while we were standing in the radiodome ‘’Tonight, I say: I love it when a plan comes together’’ and I can pretty much only agree to that! We have been blown away by the nicely synchronized music and visuals and I will definitely make sure to be there at A State Of Trance 750 in the Netherlands.
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Reporter: Alexander Bouten