Bulging line-ups risk killing the vibe on the dancefloor

The line-up has been gawped at for months. Tickets have fluttered their way from early bird right through to a steep, solid ‘SOLD OUT’ and now, finally, a plane-load of jet-lagged DJs are Ubering their way, like an army, toward the venue. It’s Saturday night and the big event is here: the one that’s spewed name after name after name via their Facebook like a Hawaiian volcano. The set times, therefore, are mind-boggling. Dixon for an hour and a half, clashing with, who? Seth Troxler? For an hour? Nip out for a fag and you might miss the DJ you paid £60 for. Or you might come to realise that two-thirds of the 22-strong line-up aren’t going to even grace your ears that night. Even worse, get stuck in the wrong, overcrowded room and you’ll be watching DJs you didn’t even want to see fight over the decks like Instagram personalities over a particularly photogenic bit of street art. But when they’ve been booked for an hour there’s no wonder everyone wants to go back-to-back.

Backstage, with 20-plus DJs on a six-hour line-up, the Green Room crams up quicker than a tube train at peak time. And amid a cigarette fog and global touring DJs the promoter stands, sweaty, in a corner, ket having kicked in, gazing, horrified, at the monster they’ve created. They crush their beer can with a fist, muttering, “There’s just too… many… DJs.”

It’s an all too familiar sight. Promoters fill their line-ups with as many acts as possible in the hope they’ll drag punters from disparate corners of dance music along with them, and fill the rooms. Making fans ‘Ooh’ and ‘Ahh’ at a line-up as it’s announced is all well and good, but does it inevitably ruin the vibe of the event on the night? Putting huge names who are used to soundtracking nights with experimental and expertly conducted marathon sets on stage for an hour is both unfair for the DJ – and for the fans in front of them.

But it’s rarely taken into account, and ticket sales are the priority most of the time, leaving the night to become stuttered; DJs stopping and starting, disco here, techno there, trance in the next set. Many DJs have staple tracks that sound great when organically emerging from a four- or five-hour set, but cramming that into an hour and a half takes away from what it should be: a steady migration through sounds and feelings. Most can relate to standing in a humongous warehouse just getting into a vibe to then realise that the DJ has to stop and a completely new sound starts up that clashes with the last.

Then there’s the knock-on effect these super-sized events have on smaller nights in the vicinity. With the exclusivity deals put in place, trying to book a big-name within two months of one of these bad boys is nigh-on impossible, and trying to get people to go out when they’ve just splashed £50 on a night two months away is pretty hard, too.

It might be unfair to paint these jumbo events in an entirely negative light. We can all attest to the fact that there’s something magical about a banger going off in a huge laser-filled room, and while they might bank on the big names to sell tickets, this does give promoters space to bring through some up-and-comers or give a relative unknown a residency opening a room.

But don’t you occasionally get the overwhelming feeling that sometimes less is more? Fair enough if all these names were spread across a festival weekend – but across an eight-hour club night things just feel a little crammed. The big money-making nights should be looking at keeping the DJs to a minimum, giving them space to express themselves. The best parties are often those that have two or three DJs for the whole night, meaning you know exactly what you are getting and when you go to find your friend, you know you aren’t going to miss a big moment. You also don’t spend the whole night trudging from one room to the next trying to shrug off the FOMO. While not quite adhering to Berghain’s policy of sets being four hours at an absolute minimum, Printworks has done quite a good job of striking a balance since opening, with DJs getting at least two hours and generally keeping the main room to four or five DJs across the day when they could probably try and cram in seven or eight.

A DJ can perform better when they know they’ve got a stretch of time ahead of them and that no one’s going anywhere – not to see Denis Sulta B2B The Black Madonna B2B The Martinez Brothers in Room 6 or Ben Klock B2B Helena Hauff B2B Nina Kraviz in Room 3. These nights should be kept as they once were: underground raves with a united sound, not filled up like festivals, each act showing off their shimmering memory stick with the three or four tracks that everybody expects them to play. Let the crowd think. Let the DJs breathe.