Just one week after Sonik launched its assault on the collective ears of Perth, it was time for yet another breaks spectacular. Saturday March 10 was greatly anticipated thanks to the imminent arrival of perennial favourites The Crystal Method and break-tastic duo the Drummatic Twins. Once again, the night grew cold and frosty, and the thought of necessary plodding between two venues struck a chill through many hearts, but the uggies were left at home (except for those worn by fashionistas) and the party shoes pulled on in defiance.

Checking in at Ambar revealed a small crowd and not a lot going on. We immediately decided to head up the road to Gilkinson’s, to snag a good vantage point or plot of dance floor before The Crystal Method appeared and the crowd sucked the space out of the room. Having never been to Gilkinson’s before, I must say I was very impressed with the promoter’s choice of venue. It was spacious, with a great balcony for hanging about and watching the goings on below and plenty of tables and chairs scattered about the place. Feeling slightly under the weather, I took to a plastic chair like a prawn to river scum and settled in for a snoop at the scene around me. Bizarrely, a giant screen behind the decks was showing such great visual entertainment as Ghostbusters and what looked like an old Wimbledon game featuring dated “tennis hunk” Pat Cash. How very . . . retro?

Breakaholics (Ben Mac, Fdel, Micah) had the command of the room when we arrived and were laying down a great selection of enthusiastic, upbeat tunes for a steadily growing crowd. Damned if I can remember the name of the tune, but that one that goes “This is the story of my day, this is the story of my life” etc made me feel slightly more perky. It was an eclectic bag of bananas being thrown out by the boys monkeying around behind the decks, from the digga-digga and yeah yeahs of the Plump DJs (of course) to reworked “classics” (for some) like Whoomp, there it is and Funk Phenomenon. As usual, there were plenty of people dancing with little regard for rhythm (yes, you can move your feet at the rate of lightening, but kicking the people around you with your clumsy, fancy footwork ain’t cool) and little room for posing still life – everyone was there to move, dammit.

The end of the set brought a massive, anthem style buildup and break down of monstrous, moody breaks that made the whole room vibrate and shake. The whole room was roaring for more at this stage, and the somewhat late arrival of The Crystal Method on stage did little to dispel the excitement. They came in hard and fast, which seemed strangely to cause a sudden lull in the room, as people adjusted from funky breaks to a more driven, solid style. Apparently, at this stage, some fully paid up yet luckless punters started to queue outside for a miserable and indeterminate time, as the venue swelled to capacity and more. Coming up from downstairs for a breather meant access to dancefloor was also denied for a time, so this is where the limitations of the venue became apparent.

Although I didn’t stay for the whole set (had duo-venue duties), The Crystal Method seemed to by all accounts to be intent on delivering a much harder set. The lower-key mood the crowd seemed to experience in the beginning soon picked up again and a kind of trance-breaks sound settled over the room. Feeling unable to throw myself into the middle of the intense, packed dancefloor, and after a solid whack to the head from the elbow of a shirtless, gigantic, beefy dolt wearing sunglasses and flailing his arms willy-nilly, I decided to trek back down the road to Ambar.

Back at Ambar, we were surprised to find the rather fetching jumper-clad Tone still mastering the decks, with a fine if elongated set. To say the Drummatic Twins were late would be a complete understatement – they ended up taking to the stage almost and hour and a half after they were due. (inthemix editor Nojman stalked them in the toilets and informed me that they had a serious problem with laptops and bass interference). To Tone’s credit, at no point did the happy, funky mood of the much smaller crowd dissipate, as he dug deep into the ancient recesses of his record collection and threw out a huge variety of tunes, including some great remixes of Snap, the Prodigy and the Jungle Brothers, some Italo house and ragga-tipped breaks.

It was obvious when The Crystal Method had finished down the road, because the room started to swell with the bodies of hundreds more clubbers – and apparently people were waiting in the line outside for up to an hour! I would have been very pissed off, if I were them. Still, lucky for them but sadly for me, at that point I started to feel really ill. A short trip to the “chill-out area”, literally very chilly, as it was constructed out of a car park, tarpaulin and a few couches outside) did nothing to improve my condition, so before the Twins even made it to the stage I was forced to head for home, much to my disgust. But the review must go on, and no reviewer is a lone island – we have eyes and ears everywhere! Plus one proved to be extremely useful in this situation. He valiantly took some illegible notes and colluded with nojman to reconstruct the final breakdown (ha!) of events. Over to you boys:

NB. Flipsidedown takes no responsibility for the following text ;-). This is a reconstruction only.

Plus one says: There was lots of record-waving when the Twins threw down their biggest, bassiest tunes. Classic breakbeat that drifted into darker territory with hints of Missy Elliot. Some random guy played the drums on my beanie to the sampled sounds of Grandmaster Flash’s The Message. They played that wicked electro tune that goes “I really love it when you feel like getting nasty” which I liken to the sounds of the Luftwaffe. A heap of vocal tracks and grinding basslines towards the end meant there was more fat burnt on that dance floor than an hour of Extreme Makeover!

Nojman: note taker number two says “mention at 5:00am q tip breathe and stop acapella over Plump DJ creepshow – awesome!

Thanks guys! :)