Once again I was counting days till the weekend and another EXPOSED Friday at Mod Club. I have also been actively recruiting my friends and acquaintances to not miss Hector Romero as he is known to be one of my all-time favourite DJs.

My love for Hector began when I heard his promo set for New Year’s Eve at Sonic nightclub at my friend’s place last January. That night I impudently snatched the CD from her and headed home looking forward to listening to it again. The next morning I transferred it to my iPod and kept playing it over and over while riding gloomy TTC for the next few days.

The next logical step was to add Hector on MySpace, since browsing MySpace was one of the highlights of my last winter. I must have been really bored, but I ended up messaging him and letting him know how much I really liked his set. To my surprise, not even an hour later he wrote me a personal thank you reply with a link to his live set from La Gare nightclub in Turin, which I still have on my iPod till this day.

“Wow, what a friendly DJ,” I thought to myself. Ever since I have been following his tour dates and occasionally downloading his mixes, which never disappoint.

What makes Hector’s mixes so special is that he never plays similar sets, and that you never know what to expect from him. He may occasionally drop the same track or two, but overall the mood of the mix is different each time. I came to witness this in person when I saw him play this summer at The Docks, which is now known the Sound Academy, and his set was unlike any of his mixes that I had previously listened to. He was the headliner for one of the Sunday Sunset Sessions, which ended up being my favourite party of the summer.

Same thing happened at Mod Club the night that he played. Prior to the party I have been listening to his mix from Big City Beats, which mostly consisted of uplifting tribal tracks with lots of passionate female vocals. I was coming to this event hoping to hear something similar, but was in for a big surprise, because once again he played a completely different set.

First of all, Romero kept appearing and disappearing on stage with a big smile on his face making the crowd think that he was coming on to play soon, but didn’t officially start his set till about 2 am. DJ Addy played an awesome warm-up mix before and already had the dance floor full anxiously waiting for the headliner. Once Hector took over, he unleashed a very dark electroish and progressive sound, which I thought was appropriate for the timing and the mood. Occasionally, he threw in a tribal track here and there, but I wouldn’t say that he stuck to a particular genre throughout his whole mix. The mood somewhat reminded me of the night when Lexicon Avenue played at Mod back in October.

The night was definitely one of the busiest EXPOSED Friday nights. The last time Mod Club was as busy was when DJ Vibe played back in November. People really seem to love Hector Romero in Toronto, and he seems to like us back because he visits the city quite often. I am definitely looking forward to seeing him play once again.

I was slightly disappointed that he did not play any vocal tracks because as a girl I was looking forward to getting lost to a few cheesy tracks on the dance floor. So he better make it up to me next time he is in Toronto. Perhaps, he should headline an EXPOSED event again sometimes soon!

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This entry was posted on Friday, January 18th, 2008 at 12:00 am and is filed under EVENT.reviews. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.