A Night of Trance is no doubt becoming one of the best uplifting trance nights in Sydney. This weekend the club night run by Josh and Friends is having its first birthday after constantly growing in size, and having moved through a number of Sydney venues in the process including the Icebox and Suzy Q’s. This event sees the night held at its new home on Oxford St, Arq and features Diggs & Morro, Josh Van Aalst vs Marishka, Scott Richardson vs Cameron O’Shea, and Stama vs Rob Noble. A second room downstairs will offer the best in progressive and tech trance featuring DJs Scott Baker, Muli, Adam Jace and Eddie Coutler.

We rocked up to the club just after 11pm to join a fair number of punters who had already arrived and were soaking up the tunes from Diggs and Morro on the main floor. These two were already well under way in getting the crowd pumped up dishing out some tasty progressive and booming breaks tracks such as Jase from Outa Space – Do What You Want (Infusion Remix) and the squelchy Alter Ego – Rocket. For the last hour of their set they moved finished with a flurry of atmospheric trance tracks including Lightscape – Innerwamth and the Midway remix of Solarstone’s classic Solarcoaster.

By this stage the crowd was well and truly hyped up and the venue nicely packed by smiling faces. Next up was promoter and resident Josh Van Aalst and Marishka playing back to back. These two kicked off their set with some huge euphoric tracks such as Kane – Rain On Me (DJ Tiesto Vocal Remix) which were all lapped up by the crowd. Other highlight tunes included Pulser – My Religion, and Matt Darey – Beautiful which both created some nice hands in the air moments. The lasers kicked in at about 1pm during Josh’s and Marishka’s set and they definitely lit up the atmosphere of the room filling it with foggy green beams much to the delight of the manic crowd.

As the night hit 2am it was time for Scott Richardson vs Cameron O’Shea to take over where Josh and Marishka left off. These two started off the set with some amazing uplifting tunes which soon had the entire main room lost in the dreamy sounds and friendly vibe. At this stage the lasers were going mental, covering the dance floor in layers of green light. This was quite a sight to view from the balcony level as laser beams moved from across the room. Some of the highlight tunes during their set were GTR – Mistral and a remix of Andy Hunter’s – Go.

Unfortunately I couldn’t stay for much of Stama vs Rob Noble but heard from several people that they rocked the main room hard till closing time with an onslaught of hard edged uplifting trance tunes. I Spent some time in the second room which was located down stairs where all things progressive, and tech flavoured were on offer. The last part of Muli’s set sounded great downstairs during which he was laying down some fat big room prog tunes and some nice tech tunage.

In summary, well done on a fantastic night to the Josh and Friends crew. It is great to see a fairly new trance night in Sydney growing from strength to strength and attracting more people with each month. The vibe on the dancefloor right from the start of the night was outstanding, you couldn’t help feel the friendliness and great atmosphere the crowd was projecting just by being there. I must once again compliment this venue due to its perfect size, layout, and sound; and we can only hope it is used for more events in the future. I look forward to the next in this series of parties where the Josh and Friends crew will be bringing up several of Melbournes best uplifting trance DJs to play alongside the Sydney residents. See you at the next one!