[EVENT REVIEW] Dom Dolla Electrifies The Brooklyn Mirage With A House-Fueled Adventure

The days are getting longer, the nights are getting warmer, and all NYC-area ravers know what that means: New York City’s open-air dance music mecca – The Brooklyn Mirage – is kicking into gear.

Following an exciting opening weekend featuring headline sets from house music heavyweights Chris Lake and Tchami, whoever headlined the Mirage on Thursday, May 11th, was always going to have a tough act to follow. 

Dom Dolla answered the bell. The Australian DJ and producer rocked the house on the first of his own two-night headline takeover of the iconic NYC venue. With opening sets provided by tech house up-and-comers Azzecca and Torren Foot, attendees were gifted with a night of groovy beats from start to finish.

Check out iEDM’s review of Dom Dolla’s performance at The Brooklyn Mirage below.

The Brooklyn Mirage is not your average music venue. Hidden away in a mostly industrial area of Brooklyn’s East Williamsburg neighborhood, the journey to the Mirage makes you feel like you’re headed to… absolutely nowhere. That is, until you feel the bass reverberating and catch a glimpse of strobe lights flickering through the sky as you approach. 

Upon entering the Avant Gardner complex – which includes The Brooklyn Mirage and two smaller indoor venues – guests herd past a food court with some delicious options and a bar before feasting their eyes on the Mirage’s crown jewel: a 200-foot wide, 30-foot tall LED video screen.

Many dance music fans have seen videos taken at the Mirage, but one cannot fully understand the enormity of this video screen until standing a few feet in front of it. It wraps partially around the front of the crowd to create an experience so immersive, you could only compare the production to top festivals in the world. 

A Throne Fit For A King

Charismatic artists who thrive in high-energy environments are perfect for performing at this beast of a dance club. DJs with talented visual teams capable of concocting mystifying graphics are able to maximize the venue’s considerable production resources. All of the above applies to Dom Dolla. 

Azzecca and Torren Foot each played a two-hour set, warming up the crowd with funky tech house beats while the creatures of the night filed in. They were afforded very little performance augmentation in terms of strobe lights and background visuals. However, that minimalist approach to the opening sets inevitably made the headliner’s production more awe-inspiring. 

Enter, Mr. Dolla.

The 31-year-old star took the stage promptly at midnight and kicked off his set with an unreleased track that had everyone shook. Over the next two hours, he took devoted fans and new followers alike on an audiovisual journey through the realm of house music.

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The first few tracks he played were on the deeper and more techno end of the tech house spectrum. Corresponding visuals were pretty tame, with mere touches of color pulsating in geometric patterns around the LED screen. 

Top Tracks Of The Night

The party kicked into second gear when Dom played his wildly popular remix of “New Gold”. This anthem was complemented by fire shooting out of countless orifices around the Mirage’s stage as the beat dropped. That moment garnered the first of several awesome crowd reactions throughout the night.

Later on, he dropped an edit of Tiga’s “Mind Dimension”, which prompted the crowd to sing along to the line preceding the drop – “Every time I look into your eyes I see the future.” Dom Dolla’s team began wielding the Mirage’s considerable production power at this point, bathing the crowd in lasers as the energy heated up.

Other visuals throughout the show made viewers feel as though they were being submerged beneath a pile of fractalized leaves falling from the sky, or hypnotized by television static while enveloped in a psychedelic haze.

The headline set prominently featured the stylings of English house duo Gorgon City. Their remixes of John Summit’s “Where You Are” and Dom Dolla’s collab with Sonny Fodera, “Moving Blind”, both elicited excited responses from the packed crowd. 

Additional songs that garnered positive crowd reactions included Mau P’s forthcoming ID, “Your Mind Is Dirty", and an acid house-inspired remix of Sean Paul’s 2002 party starter “Get Busy”. Rounding out these heaters was Dom Dolla’s iconic song “Define”, which saw the whole crowd rejoicing and singing in unison as the evening approached its conclusion.

A Fitting Finale

Dom Dolla’s latest release, “Rhyme Dust”, was another massive hit during the midst of the set. Unfortunately, attendees who decided to leave the show before its 2am conclusion to beat traffic only heard the song's original mix. Dom had a surprise planned for those who stuck around.

For his final output of the evening, Dom circled back to “Rhyme Dust”, but this time with a twist: he played out Dimension’s recently released drum & bass remix of the tune, as he was cascaded in strobe lights from the partial roof above the stage.

The entire crowd was sent into a frenzy of the best kind, relinquishing every last bit of energy they had before Dom Dolla got on the microphone and commended everyone for partying in such a committed fashion on a Thursday night. 

Overall, this show was a phenomenal experience. Dom Dolla was at his genre-bending best, effortlessly mixing classic tech house with elements of acid house, future house, techno, and drum & bass.

In a world full of uncertainties, one thing is for sure: whether he is playing at a festival mainstage, an intimate club, or a headline show at a large venue like the Brooklyn Mirage, Dom Dolla knows how to keep the people dancing – and he always leaves you excited for next time.