Over the last couple of months, heats were taking place around a number of Perth Universities and TAFE centres in order to pick out the best student DJ’s so that they could compete in the finals of the Future DJ competition. The competition was open to anyone that was currently studying full time at a TAFE or University and Ambar played host to the final round of the competition. The judging panel consisted of Kenny L from the DJ Factory as well as Mandy B and Brian from Kosmic. The finalists were competing to represent W.A in the national finals, with the overall prize being a set at Melbourne Two Tribes as well as Earthcore. Each DJ had just 10 minutes to try and impress the judges with a small intermission between each set.

First up for the night was DJ Cam who laid down quite a typical sounding breaks set finishing up with a drum n bass tune. He seemed to play it safe with each mix, not really going out of his way to do anything extra other than just mix the next song in. However, each mix was quite smooth and he played Freestylers – Push Up which got a bit of a reaction from some of the people there.

DJ Pound was up next and played a set consisting of mostly breaks with some hip- hop also. Solid mixes characterized his set and dropping a Busta Rhymes accapella over another breaks tune was pretty much the highlight. Pound had a good knack for working the build ups and then prolonging the drops which was pretty impressive considering he only had ten minutes to work with. Ending up with the breaks mix of Green Velvet -La La Land, Pound delivered quite a nice set which consisted of plenty of crowd interaction.

Next up on the decks was DJ More who managed to throw in a couple of styles within his set and make it sound pretty decent. Tomcraft – Brainwashed added a lighter, slightly electro feel to his predominantly hard trance and house set. Rather than interacting with the crowd, More preferred to just groove away to his own tunes and it really did look like he was having so much fun up there.

Ziad was then up to play and he bought along a rather large number of fans all donning Ziad shirts in support of him. The sounds of hard trance dominated his set with some very ‘club’ style tracks getting dropped. His mixing was quite smooth and for the most part he did deliver quite a strong set, however towards the end when he attempted to drop an accapella of Fatboy Slim – Star 69 over another tune, it was slightly out of time which detracted from the set that had been. Overall though, it was a good set and his group of supporters were all busting out their best moves on the dance floor for its entirety.

Jon Noonan followed on and started out on a lighter tone, dropping a proggy breaks tune which provided a nice intro to the set he was going to deliver. Trance and progressive tunes dominated his set, which was accompanied with some very smooth transitions. Towards the end of his set, Noonan turned things up a little, introducing some harder even techier sounds which many in the room responded to and even got a few dancing. His set was fluid overall and he managed to rotate through quite a stack of tunes within the time limit which was pretty impressive considering the style he was playing.

DJ Eush then got started and dropped a solely drum n bass set which was quite a change in sounds from the previous DJ’s. Although he only managed to get through a few tunes in the allocated time, Eush’s mixing was top notch, very fluid which suited the style he was mixing well. He was obviously having a great time, bopping around and even singing along to his tunes. Ending up with DK & Epsilon- Barcelona, Eush had thrown down a quality drum n bass set and it was good to see he was stoked with it as well.

The final DJ up for the night was B- Swift who used the entire 10 minutes of his set to show everyone that he could scratch a record. He rotated through a few hip hop tunes but instead of mixing like everyone else, B Swift instead just did a few turntable tricks which was good to watch but it failed to demonstrate that he could mix or beat match. In fact, he didn’t even once use his headphones at all. Whilst he was pretty good at the few tricks he attempted, the set did not flow at all as it was just full of his erratic scratches and tricks.

Considering that all of the finalists were students, they were all pretty good at mixing and their sets overall were quite impressive. Perth has a good amount of up and comer talent that’s for sure. After a 15 minute interval for the judges to tally up their scores, the winner was announced. Jon Noonan was chosen as the W.A finalist which means that he will now be flown to Melbourne to compete in the national final for a chance to with the overall prize.