Presented by Plush and Geisha, the event drew out the who’s who of the Perth house music scene. Now, if you attended and you’re not a DJ put up your hand! Almost half of the crowd were either local DJs or aspiring to be, and the rest were a collection of Geisha regulars and house music fans.

Due to unforseen events I didn’t arrive until 1:00 am, missing both Adam Kytka and Ben Elliott. I did manage to see Clint Wiltshire play his entire set though, and he did a fine job of getting everyone in the mood by playing a range of popular, deep and bouncy-style house tracks.

Escorting Gene Farris in to Geisha was resident DJ James A, who left Gene to down more than a few drinks at the bar, while he hopped on the decks for the next hour. Consistently true to form, James played a great set of quality deep house tunes.

At 3:00 am Gene Farris began his set with ‘In This Life’ by Kaskade. It was immediately noticeable how nice and clean his mixing was, which prompted me to stand at the DJ booth for awhile to see what he was doing in the mixing department.

When the easy-listening tunes continued, I started to get concerned that he played tracks that were lighter than what he produced. But I shouldn’t have worried. He eventually picked-up the pace and played some Latin-house and then progressed into the sinister tribal sound I’d expected.

By the time it hit 4:30am, Gene was playing deep, funky, tribal rhythms that had worked the crowd in to a bit of a trance. He was also dancing his ass off and regularly paying respect to the crowd, which seemed to spur everyone on further.

When the rhythms had gotten really dark and tribal, he suddenly played ‘Space Cowboy’ by Jamiroquai. The contrast of this funky track after what we’d been hearing went down a treat, and he seemed to have the crowd in the palm of his hand. He then proceeded to play some crazy acid house tracks, which were the highlight of the night for me. He continued on this vein for some time, occasionally breaking things up with melodious tracks such as ‘Sing it back’ by Moloko and ‘Flawless’ by George Michael.

From then on, something strange occurred and the set went rapidly down hill. It had been going really well for almost two hours, so I still haven’t quite figured out why it happened. Maybe it had gotten too repetitive. A few people said he’d thrown on to many commercial tracks and others said the set had started too late for a Friday night. The sound was also distorting badly because the volume and levels seemed to be turned up to high. He also lost touch with the crowd and many people left, leaving the dance floor only half full.

In the last 30 minutes of his three hour set, he replaced the tribal sound with a much cleaner minimal sound, which helped to get the groove back in those people that remained. He closed by playing a track by Missy Elliott and The White Stripes, which went down relatively well.

Despite the disappointment towards the later part of his set, there were moments when it was truly great. I had a good dance and enjoyed seeing one of the innovators of the tribal-tech sound. It’s always a shame though when the night ends on a low note, as you tend to forget the good time you’d experienced earlier on.