Markus Schulz at Mandarine Club, Buenos Aires – Argentina

Not many DJ’s can pull off two nights in a row in such an enormous venue and manage to sell out on both occasions. However, after attending the second night of Markus Schulz in Mandarine Club, I was able to see how this phenomenal Trance DJ draws in the crowds and keeps them entertained until the early hours of the morning. After completing a lengthy set on the Friday, Markus sprang back up onto the decks for another seven and a half hours the following night, a broad grin suggesting that he was more than ready for round two.

Naturally, the start of his set was mainly Trance-based and featured titles such as  Ferry Corsten’s ‘Turn Off The Lights’, ‘Beautiful Destruction’ by Cosmic Gate and his own tracks ‘Perception’, ‘Nothing Without Me’ and my personal favourite, ‘Daydream’ with Andy Moor.  Continuing with the glorious vocal theme, Markus proceeded to drop Elevation vs. Grube & Hovsepian’s remix of Ellie Goulding’s ‘Lights’, a truly uplifting moment which had the whole room standing eyes-closed with their hands in the air.

After the first couple of hours, Markus seamlessly switched from Trance to House with massive club tunes, ‘Every Day’ by melodic master Eric Prydz and Nicky Romero & Nervo’s ‘Like Home’.  The crowd was starting to get seriously pumped up at this stage, but the room really exploded when he dropped the mighty ‘Digital Punks of Gotham’, created by DJ duo New World Punx, consisting of himself and fellow Trance legend Ferry Corsten. Words can’t express how much energy that tune produced at that moment in time, for me it was the absolute highlight of the night.

From Trance, to House, and back to Trance again, Markus continued his set with relatively new production, ‘Brute’ by Ferry Corsten & Armin van Buuren, and the classic ‘Fire Wire’ by Cosmic Gate. Another vocal track came in the form of BT’s masterpiece with Jan Johnston, ‘Remember’, then he began moving on to harder stuff, kicking off with the legendary ‘Man with the Red Face’ by french maestro Laurent Garnier; if people were starting to fade by this point, this certainly succeeded in giving them a second wind! We were  then treated to a Mark Knight banger, ‘Nothing Matters’ ft. Skin, then Markus continued with the Tech House theme to keep the crowd going for the final hour. Right at the end of his set, he began to introduce a few old school classics, starting with the ultimate sing-along song, 2001 hit, ‘Rapture’ and finishing with Rui Da Silva’s ‘Touch Me’, by which stage the eager hordes of partygoers were still singing and dancing, seemingly without inclination of stopping.

All in all, this was one of my finest clubbing moments, as rarely have I had the privilege of seeing a DJ with so much experience play for such an extended period of time. As a result, I, along with the other 2,000 people there, was given the pleasure of listening to a variety of tunes across the electronic music spectrum, which I believe wouldn’t have been the case had it been a much shorter set. It was interesting to hear such an eclectic mix of Trance, Progressive House, Tech House and even Dubstep at some moments, and Markus revealed what a talented DJ he was by continuing to please the crowd whatever he put on.