Brisbane fans of progressive house have long lamented the fact that, despite booking some of the biggest names in the business, our self-proclaimed ‘superclub’ has repeatedly overlooked names like Sasha when they passed through our way. “Such a shame”, went their complaints, “that we don’t get to hear DJ’s like that on the Family sound system”.

It seems that someone at Family does know what progressive house is, and does know how good it could potentially sound standing in the middle of that dancefloor at 3am. Once this city’s legion of Sasha fans overcame their disbelief that Family had actually booked The Man Like, they soon turned their focus to something else Family has often fallen short on – the support DJ’s. Thankfully, common sense prevailed, and two well-known faces of Brisbane’s progressive circuit – Cosmo Cater and Nick Galea – were booked to support.

Arriving early to hear Cosmo warm up the system, the crowd was sparse and remained well so for the next couple of hours. There were few complaints about the size of the crowd, however – recent forays into Family to see internationals have usually resulted in much pushing, shoving, whingeing and ensuing reduction in the overall enjoyment of the night. It is pleasing to report that there were no such times on this night.

Those familiar with the work of Nick Galea will know that he’s an accomplished young producer, having collaborated with other Brisbane luminaries like Matt Nugent and also DJ’ing at events such as Global. There’s no doubt he has a fine ear for a good progressive tune. Sasha, however, is one of the dance world’s biggest, a man who has tackled the divide between DJ and producer and come out on top. Nick Galea isn’t quite there yet, indeed, there are others in Brisbane whose experience in both fields obviously shines through on a far higher level. Family’s choice to give a young gun like Nick a go at supporting one of the big boys should be applauded, it’s unfortunate that he didn’t quite measure up on the night. That said, i’ve heard far worse, and nobody can deny that Nick has a bright future ahead of him.

Let’s talk about Sasha. While this reviewer’s knowledge of progressive house doesn’t stretch back in to the previous millenium, it is safe to say that at no time in the past has Sasha been playing a more diverse, eclectic and interesting range of tunes. He’s well and truly broken free of the shackles of his 2002/2003 fixation with bland, forgettable house and breaks, and his crowds are now treated to a huge spectrum of sounds, both new and old. This is due in no small part to him completely embracing digital DJ’ing – he didn’t bring a single record or CD with him to Australia, instead performing off his laptop (using Ableton v4.0 to be precise). While the naysayers predicted this would amount to the end of dance music as we know it, in practice it turned into a beautiful example of the future of DJ’ing as we know it. Only once did the laptop have a minor hiccup and overload – causing a pause of around 1 second – causing less disturbance than a small skip of a needle.

While fans of the deep, breaks-driven Sasha sounds a la Involver were treated to tracks such as Spooky ‘Belong’, those with a taste for good old four-to-the-floor goodness were pummelled with the greatness of tunes like Etienne de Crecy ‘Fast Track’ and the Trentemoller mix of Yoshimoto ‘Do What You Do’. Even the classic Schiller ‘Ruhe’ made an appearance, to the delight of all those with knowing smiles on the dancefloor.

The night finished perfectly with another appearance from Sasha-in-waiting Cosmo Cater, who even managed to get Sasha on to the dancefloor with an awesome double-up of ‘Xpander’ and the Planet Rockers remix of ‘Heaven Scent’. After finishing the night with the serene sounds of the Cosmos mix of Lamb ‘What Sound’, the crowd shuffled out in the morning light, wishing that the night hadn’t finished seemingly as soon as it had started.

Progressive house works at Family. So would techno, given half the chance. It’s a pleasure to finally see someone like Sasha in such a supreme setting, without having to leave my home city.