After nearly 18 months of anticipation, the night was upon us. James Holden had returned to Australia, Room to be exact. I arrived just on opening time, not sure what to expect crowd wise, and upon venturing inside I was surprised to see very few people. Things stayed pretty much the same for the first hour with just a trickle of people entering the venue, however just after midnight things started to pick up with the place filling up quite rapidly. To start the night off I decided to venture into the sideroom and catch a bit of Max vs Big Kev, what a good early night set featuring a mixture of breaks, electro and a bit of prog thrown in for good measure. They finished off the set with one of my personal favourites from the latest Prodigy album, Spitfire, which drew a somewhat livley response from a now fairly packed side room.

After this I decided to head into the main room and get my first listen to a Boogs set. I was quite impressed with the first hour or so of his set as it featured some nice smooth electro and house and was a perfect warmup for a DJ such as Holden. He was also managing to get quite a positive reaction from the dancefloor, which is always a start. However, the last hour or so of his set left a lot to be desired, with a seemingly perfect warmup set falling to bits with some questionable choices for tunes, in particular an Eminem bootleg and the rather cheesey Nasty Girl. Completely unsuitable when warming up for a DJ like Holden in my opinion, however he did save himself with his last few tracks, finishing with some nice electro inclduing the awesome Tiga mix of Human Leagues Big and Dirty.

Come half past two it was the time the now full Room had been waiting for. Holden took to the decks and imediatley kicked off with a bang. Dropping bomb after bomb he managed to set the tempo of the night very early with some big dirty electro/techno tunes including the awesome Michael Mayer remix of Superpitchers Happiness. Around the second hour he picked up the tempo some more venturing into some rather slamming tech and acid house, including a rather awesome remix of Alter Ego’s Rocker. The crowd seemed to be just as eager at this middle stage of the set as they were at the start, despite the fact that Holden hadn’t dropped the tempo all night. It wasn’t till the last hour that Holden began to drop some more familiar tunes, including Petter’s All Together and his own brilliant production, A Break In The Clouds to a rather rousing response. One of the personal highlights of Holdens’ set was how adventurous he was in his mixing, while not perfect he managed to try various methods of layering and three deck mixing which is always great to hear.

After a seemingly rapid three hours it was time for James to finish up. Many, in particular myself, were eager to see what he chose to close with, and we were not disapointed with him choosing to finish with his classic remix of Kirsty Hawkinshaw’s Fine Day to a massive crowd reaction. It was now close to 6am and definetly time for me to think about sleeping, so I decided to head home. I had arrived at Room with massive expectations, usually a surefire receipe for an average night. However I was delighted to leave with all my expecations met and then exceeded by a mile. With Holden manageing to prove why he is regarded as one of the most exciting and forward thinking progressive DJ’s around yet again.