Haunted House Tour with Knife Party and Friends at Pier 94

Walking into Pier 94’s cavernous space you feel like you’re seeing the house of a really rich guy who LOVES Halloween. Spooky decorations were all over the space and adding to the fanciful atmosphere the familiar multi-colored bug shell golf carts that served as mobile hangouts at EDC NYC made an appearance as well. The venue is basically an L shape providing a long avenue between the VIP platforms for people to dance in. The stage was pretty spartan in production design instead consisting of ten different LED screens and a very impressive laser light show that worked very well in the long narrow venue.

I arrived as Style of Eye was dropping a huge sound electro set on the crowd getting the energy going strong early. His impressive mixing and hard sound selection had everyone at his beck and call as he dropped current dancefloor demolisher “Who” by Tejamo and Plastik Funk. Mixing out from that into some giant sounding drums and literally commanding vocals with the horn piece of “Who” Style built the audience back up into a full drop of “Who” sending them into a frenzy. With long builds and quality DJing, Style of Eye earned a few new fans and got the place pumped up for OWSLA artist Kill the Noise.

Jake Stanczak, or KTN has been on the scene for a couple years now really getting some notice with his big remixes like “Must be the Feeling” and his OWSLA signing. His labelmates are well known for putting on great shows and Noise did not disappoint starting his set off with Flux Pavilion’s relentless “Bass Cannon”. KTN kept the vibe dark and dirty mixing a little heavy metal before bursting into the famous “Breakin’ A Sweat” by Skrillex and The Doors. Selecting tracks like “Original Don” and “Atom”, “The Devil’s Den” and “Kick Out The Epic Motherfucker”, the New York native had his throng of admirers going bananas. He ended his set with a list of crazy songs starting with his track with Skrillex and 12th Planet “Burst” and playing into “Golddust” the Flux Pavilion remix, to “Earthquakey People” by Alvin Risk to “Jump” Dillon Francis then into the newly released Flux and Major Lazer banger “Jah No Partial”. A fast and furious ending that mixed funky moombahton with fast paced electro and dubstep to create an incredibly memorable set.

Knife Party took the stage to huge noise from their raucous mass of fans ready for their headliners. Starting with some big sounding tracks with grimy feel they played Jordy Dazz and Dannic’s “Fuego” before spinning into the dub remix of their amazing “Antidote”. Playin lesser known versions of songs like “Save the World”, “We Are Your Friends” and “Internet Friends” Gareth and Rob gave the dancing mass of people songs they knew but kept the sound fresh. Not ones to let their DJ’ing skills get rusty the duo set the floor on fire with their inventive mixing of songs like “Make it Bun Dem” into a drumstep version of Prodigy’s “Smack My Bitch Up”. Cutting back and forth between songs of theirs like “Centipede” and their remix of Porter Robinson’s “Unison” they really lit the crowd up with their track “Bonfire” off of the “Rage Valley” EP. Knife Party took the dirty dubstep sound Kill The Noise has established during his set and stripped it down offering a very drum n’ bass influenced aesthetic to the people instead. Rob has been known for a few drumstep remixes here and there and his and Gareth’s enjoyment of that sound permeated their whole performance. Their legions of revelers responded to the brilliant musical selection but their real love was for Gareth and Rob who once again rocked the party and delivered the goods like few others can.

Stepping up the decks at 3am fellow Aussie Tommy Trash was determined to make sure anyone who left before his set was done would regret it. A producer of anthemic party tracks the Trashman opened with Eric Prydz’s “Personal Jesus” and followed with some tracks that kept the dirty drum vibe while injecting his own electro flavor back into the night. For a minute Tommy stopped things and spoke to the crowd, and from that silence played his remix of Deadmau5’s “The Veldt” which for my money is probably one of the best songs to go from silence to pounding sound quickly in the business. Trash knows what work in his sets and plays a piece he’s done before at shows that just works playing his “Monkey See Monkey Do” into a mix of Florence + The Machine’s “You’ve Got the Love” and his track “The End”. He retained a huge portion of the audience and his music kept everyone going as he let loose a huge mix of “We Are Your Friends” transitioning into his collaboration with Sebastian Ingrosso, “Reload”. From there the set got harder but Tommy kept mixing in little progressive elements culminating with his phenomenal remix of Steve Aoki’s “Ladi Dadi” driving the last of Friday’s partiers into a frenzy and capping the night off perfectly. Aside from long waits at the bar and of course, $6 waters, the night was run well, there didn’t seem to be any incidents and all the performers knocked it out of the park. Can’t ask for much more from your Halloweekend.