Jacked New Years reviewed

Jacked at Pier 94 was one of the many options available to electronic music fans in New York to celebrate New Year’s 2013. For fans in the area who haven’t had a ‘festival-worthy’ dance marathon since Electric Zoo, Jacked was certainly the event of choice, spanning a marathon ten plus hours (officially from 8pm to 6am). Pier 94 has fast become of the go-to venues for music shows, featuring something lacking in most of Manhattan - large open space that is relatively easy to access.The show, as expected, was an energetic, full capacity rage to welcome the New Years (the cold weather couldn’t stop attendees from coming out in their dance gear, although the coat check line did suffer). Despite having a significant tilt towards electro house, all of the performances surprisingly had very little overlap among the tracks played.

After an opening set by Leroy Styles, we arrived to the venue in the middle of Brooklyn-native Tommie Sunshine’s set. For anyone doubting the freshness and varied nature of electronic music, give Tommie Sunshine a listen...he played everything from Firebeatz’s “Dear New York” to sandwiching a couple Nas songs (“Braveheart” was one) in between a dubstep track. As midnight approached, Afrojack, performing on consecutuve nights at Pier 94, took the decks and started off the New Year in New York with Sinatras’ “New York, New York." At this point, the venue appeared to be jam-packed and ready to rage.

Afrojack played an appropriately geared up set for less than an hour (he was to perform back-to-back alongside Quintino, Shermanology, & Bobby Burns). He started off predictably with “Bangduck” (this has been his opener for almost two years now...), but made up for this around half hour later with a trap remix of “Bangduck” which I have not heard before and caught me off-guard. The balance of the set was comprised of Afrojack hits - the recent “Annie’s Theme” and a brand new track (ID?) - and big-room hits (Nari & Milani’s “Atom” and Plastik Funk & Tujamo’s “Who,” the latter of which always brings out the primal animal among ragers). He also played the remix to Psy’s “Gangnam Style” which everyone (including non-Koreans) somehow know the lyrics and sing along to.

Next up was Quintino, one of the up and coming producers in the genre. Quintino, with Afrojack taking over during the set, kept the high energy going with some of his massive remixes (Tiesto’s “Chasing Summers”) and Afrojack songs (Afrojacks’ mainstream breakout track “Takeover Control” and his collaboration with Aoki “No Beef”). Shermanology & Bobby Burns, both of whom have worked with Afrojack in the past, were up next. Afrojack ended Shermanology’s set with the duo’s “Can’t Stop Me Now” with live vocals. R3hab brought much needed adrenaline to the crowd, a majority of which had been going strong for a good five to eight hours by now. He played a handful of his own originals and remixes (“A Night In” and Calvin Harris’ “Bounce”). Where he really shined was replicating a festival set, somehow getting the crowd to dig into their reserve energy with the Dada Life's “Kick Out The Epic” and Knife Party's “Rage Valley.” At this point, I was a bit exhausted to last the entirety of Bobby Burns’ closing set. From what we heard for about twenty minutes, he continued the epic New Year going until 6am (there were still plenty of ragers left, who now had what everyone wants...space for a 4x4 personal perimeter to stomp the ground in as hard as you can).

Check out the gallery HERE.