Pete Tong @ The O2

Just over a year after going to see Pete Tong with an orchestra I was back at the O2 last night to see him again.

After a week of lots of drinking I decided to have a break from the alcohol last night, but thought I'd check the current price of beer in the O2. Depending on what beer you choose you're looking at either £6.50 or £6.80 which is absolutely ridiculous.

Pete Tong and the orchestra arrived on stage pretty much bang on 21:00 as scheduled and began with "Right Here Right Now" by Fatboy Slim. Great tune of course, but I was getting deja vu. Next up was "Pjanoo" by Eric Prydz and then out came a vocalist to sing "Lola's Theme" by Shapeshifters. These were the same 3 tunes that opened up last year. I feared we'd be getting exactly the same set as last year, as much as I enjoyed last year I didn't like the thought of spending over £50 to see the same thing again.

Fortunately it wasn't the same set. Around half the tunes were done last year and half were new. Another good thing is they didn't include Rudimental tunes and Ella Eyre was nowhere to be seen. We weren't exempt from rubbish vocalists though, amongst them was another Rudimental collaborator Becky Hill, whilst she wasn't as bad as Ella Eyre she was still pretty dreadful.

Amongst the new tracks for this year were "Killer" by Adamski, "Galvanize" by Chemical Brothers and "Unfinished Sympathy" by Massive Attack, something Massive Attack member 3D isn't too happy about. They were perhaps a bit more ambitious with the new tunes this year as they seemed more difficult to transform into orchestral music, but all in all they did a good job.

We also had a tune which charted this year featured, "You Don't Know Me" by Jax Jones. The actual singer Raye also appeared on stage to sing it. However, many dance music fans will know this tune is essential "Body Language" by M.A.N.D.Y vs Booka Shade with vocals so needless to say I'd rather that be the tune that featured.

We did however have "One" by Swedish House Mafia minus the vocals which was a big improvement on the original. There were no vocals to "Insomnia" by Faithless either, but if I had to pick one tune to preserve the vocals on then that one would probably be it.

Towards the end we had "Café Del Mar" by Energy 52 which was probably the most appropriate tune to keep in the set given it's named after a bar in Ibiza. It was the one that seemed to get the best reaction from the crowd too.

For me though the highlight was "Man With the Red Face" by Laurent Garnier. It was new for this year and it works so well being played by an orchestra.

The final track of the night was "Out of Space" by the Prodigy which was certainly a good choice to end the show with.

Overall it was a good gig, the orchestra does a very good job of playing these tunes and sometimes it sounds so similar to the original that you forget the orchestra is there. I would however love it if they could do a performance without any vocals.