Live Review: Aly and Fila @ Blue Frog

Armin van Buuren is an ardent fan of these two, and with a real pedigree come Aly and Fila from Egypt. This trance duo is a force to reckon with and have every bit the energetic, pulsating sound of uplifting trance running through their veins. They were in Mumbai at the Blue Frog this past Saturday.

Playing to an eager crowd with Mumbai’s trance aficionados thronging in numbers to see the World no #22 DJs strut their wares, they did not disappoint.

Ably opened by Brute Force, who spun some delicious progressive tunes with PHAT basslines and was an awesome beginning to what was going to be a heady night, a really long, heady night of goosebumpy tchoonage (Over 3 hours, a massive extended treat).

Right from his first track—Fila (or  Fadi Wassef Naguib ) playing alone in the absence of his partner Aly—squeezed the lemon out of the crowd, banging a thick, heavy bassline with a flurry of synth and melody laced all across as he banged uplifter after uplifter. Heavy tech and borderline psy elements paraded through segments and kept the set extremely tight and hard.

To the trance addict, the very intense trance addict, this brand of the music is pure bliss, as it represents a slightly purer, less commercial stand to the genre. However, a few people expecting more vocals were in for a little bit of disappointment as Fila stuck to their trademark non-vocal majority sound but peppered the mix with a few vocals such asa their remix of the iconic Lost by Sunlounger and Lange’s Out of Sky along with notables such as Filo and Peri’s Ashley and DJ Shah’s Back to You. Some of the massive non-vocal tunes were Lost Language and their mix of FKN’s Why which drove the crowd into delirium.

Quite rarely do you see DJs who will completely stick to their sound and style, and not bastardize it for the sake of the crowd and Aly and Fila stood for their sound and blew the place apart with it. Quite refreshing.

To sum it up, it was an extremely tight set, with Fila’s indescribably awesome mixing which is beyond seamless. A set which a lot of us will remember with goosebumps, spine chills and head-spinning madness.