Richard Durand live at the Blue Frog!

In Search of Sunrise (ISOS) is one of the longest running compilations on the planet coming out of Tiesto’s beautiful mind at first before it finally was inherited by the uber-talented Dutchman, Mr. Richard Durand. And has he taken the mantle to higher limits, every compilation takes one country and tries to encapsulate one country. Luckily for us, ISOS 9 happens to be India. And with Durand’s love for the country, he really tries and succeeds in capturing the spirit.

Bouncing with a typically upbeat vocal-friendly and super enjoyable opener was Nikhil Chinapa with a new array of tech and prog and funky and everything he likes. He’s got one of the finest knacks for picking such fun in every track he plays—you can almost draw spikes in the air every time a song changes.

Around the 12 am mark, Richard comes in with his affable smile and immediately announces his customary love for the country and the set takes a very Indian pick up with ‘Lost Stories - All Good Things (Prayag & Rishab Intro Mix)’ with roving flutes and brooding build up, it can’t get more India than this.

Somehow he lays ‘Axwell vs Thomas Gold feat. Adele- Blow Up In The Deep (Axwell Bootleg)’ and that changes the mood in one track’s time, the crowd erupts at the mere sliver of Adele’s voice.

He takes a hard(ish) uplifting route there on, banging high-trance-stabs tracks straight from ISOS and around, taking the set graph to an immediate steep curve. The peak time arrives early and he gets through 3-4 uplifters albeit very high on melody, as piano synths feature regularly.

And suddenly in comes the vivacious and caffeine-bouncy voice and all of Julie Thompson who is seemingly very very charged up.

She plugs in a couple of tracks quickly and Richard goes and socializes, and you know what—for something as tough as a trance singer to go live, she does a pretty tight job. Her octaves on the higher notes are brilliant and in the falsetto she’s nearly flawless. As soon as she begins to croon to ‘Tiesto Pres Allure Feat Julie Thompson - Somewhere Inside Of Me’, it’s just ethereal.

Durand plops himself back to the decks and dances away as a few more non-vocals serrate the set at this point. It seems he is establishing a Julie does vocals and I do non pattern but just then—he throws in a few good vocals like ‘These Shoulders’ for good measure and brings the crowd back.

Julie comes back for another cameo, this time, visibly more energetic (if that’s possible!).

Durand then goes even higher with tunes like ‘Ferry Corsten - Punk (Arty Rock-n-Rolla mix)’ or Armin and Ferry’s ‘Brute’ collab and peak time suddenly is three quarters of this set. With the announcement of another 30 minutes in the set, the pressure is cranked to the maximum and he finishes it with the classic ‘Make-The-Indians-Or-Any-Damn-Nationality’ go bonkers track in ‘In and Out of Love/On Off’ and its obvious everyone recognizes it—everyone loves it.

Durand’s mixing gets better every time you see him and so does his flow, and why he’s so underrated seems to baffle me, he’s a proper Dutch version of Gareth Emery to say the least and his track selection is just liquid fun. His sound is so catholic anyone can walk into a gig and enjoy themselves, EDM-snobs (if we exist at all) can take a hike.

Photo credit: Kartikey Shiva