Joe Theobald, aka DJ Captain Wormhole, Looks at all things vinyl 

IT all started back in 2011. My best mate had just opened a record store in the tented market and during breaks from university I spent most of my time there drinking tinnies and playing crunchy tunes.

I walked in to the shop one day as Sean was placing the needle on a record. As he looked up I registered an intense aura of excitement and anticipation.

The wax started turning for the first time I listened to Jean-Michel Jarre’s Equinoxe IV. Over the next couple of weeks we scared off more than a few customers blasting that record out across the market and dancing around like maniacs.

A year or so later and back at the good ol’ University of Essex I was shooting some pool with my dear friend Iancu when the great Jarre came up in conversation. The Frenchman doesn’t do anything by half measures and we were laughing about his ridiculously grandiose shows which typically involve hundreds of thousands of pounds worth of fireworks, searchlights, lasers and a ‘Laser Harp’.

He’s held the world record for the biggest ever gig four times (currently 3.5m people in Moscow) and he’s even played the Pyramids. The Pyramids. The big ones in Egypt.

Iancu and I shook hands that day, on a pact that we would see Jarre, and last Friday that pact was honoured.

The big show took place at London’s the Millennium Dome and it was a suitably epic venue.

I’d been on the beers all afternoon and was awash with adrenaline when we got to our seats. It sank in that I would be going without a cigarette for a few hours and I felt a little overwhelmed and queasy, like when you’re at a house party and it’s all going off in the kitchen and then you walk into the lounge and everyone is all calm and talking pseudo-philosophical nonsense and you’re just like “this room ain’t for me”. Basically I felt like that but with 20,000 people in the lounge — and I was trapped.

The show started and I calmed down and there were 3D images, LED curtains, loads of lasers and of course the Laser Harp. As the show progressed the spectacle grew in ostentation, the music skirted the line between masterpiece and madness and the atmosphere in the arena built to a state of mild euphoria.

You could really pick out the genealogy of multiple modern electronic genres, from Trance to Dub Step, amplified over an impeccable sound system. It was really top drawer, nine thumbs up.