Gatecrasher NEC

Birmingham NEC is a dark, forboding colossus on a rainy Saturday night in November....until Gatecrasher NXT lands. For the first time, Bugged Out! have joined in the fun alongside the mentalist hard-house antics of Tidy Trax to ensure that the 'Crasher faithful have a wide variety of DJs to shake their glowsticks at. It's an impressive line up that includes Lisa Lashes, FC Kahuna, the recently voted No 1 DJ, Tiesto and Underworld, playing the last date of their UK comeback tour.

Upon venturing into Gatecrasher's main arena, it becomes apparent that most of the punters are of the age that would struggle to legally buy a lottery ticket, making a young-looking reviewer in his mid-twenties positively pensionable. Neither are they pacing themselves - launching onto the dancefloor, hands pumping in the air to Talla's widescreen trance.

It's a lot quieter in Bugged Out! as Rob Bright fails to enthuse the few that have wandered in there by accident. It's the Tidy Trax Arena that has attracted the cream of the crowd and Paul Kershaw laps it up. Nick Sentience fails to sustain the momentum and his set is plagued by every DJ's nightmare, skipping vinyl, caused by the same rumbling bass that's now coursing through the NEC's foundations.

Underworld are one of the biggest draws of the evening and rightly so although the clash of set times with Tiesto splits the masses fairly evenly. Karl Hyde leaps and wiggles across the stage like Moby's older brother before delivering a climactic, once-in-a-lifetime rush to 5,000 people as Born Slippy emerges for an outstanding encore.

If only the evening could have had more of these moments. But it just didn't feel right. A great effort had been made to transform the NEC's conference halls into otherworldly dance sanctuaries but there was a dated feel throughout the proceedings, and not in a good sense. Poor organization and crowd management resulted in several hundred of us stuck in a corridor, in limbo, between arenas for at least half an hour. Whereas the 'Calm Room' had the décor of a retirement home and the atmosphere an airport lounge.

For every Armin Van Buuren who displayed technical and creative genius there was a Judge Jules who foolishly tried his hand at scratching whilst playing out back to back with Eddie Halliwell. It was a brave attempt by Gatecrasher who attempted to experiment with an innovative and exciting array of artists. If only the same care and attention could be paid to the venue.