Sunday March 6 was a special day in Perth. It was one of those rare occasions that gave punters the opportunity to hear music live rather than simply from a record or CD. Infected Mushroom, arguably the world’s best live trance act, made the journey from their home of Israel to show the people of Perth how one of the original psy-trance acts do their thing.

Tigger, fresh from Two Tribes support duties, opened the evening with his style of music and warmed up well as punters arrived and filtered into Heat’s indoor area. One thing I noticed was the amount of hippies in attendance and thought it must have been strange for them seeing Infected Mushroom in an indoor venue. I thought it was great to see all walks of society getting together to appreciate the music.

Next up on the decks was Psy Baba, who stepped up the tempo and turned the music in a more driving direction. His set featured something of a tech-like element with more than a few interesting quirks such as the odd animal noise and oriental instrument samples. The honours of warming up before the main act went to Akira, who delivered a seamlessly mixed psy-trance set of dark yet driving tunes where one track seemed to flow almost effortlessly into the next. It was a great build up to what was to follow.

Infected Mushroom themselves then took to the stage and delivered one of the best live sets I have had the pleasure of seeing. They went through many of the tracks on their new album such as Cities of the Future and the title track to the album, IM the Supervisor. The fact that they used live vocals, an electric guitar and a keyboard in addition to a multitude of other musical tunes made this something awesome to behold. The crowd was absolutely loving it and the dancefloor was packed from start to finish. To the delight of those with the energy to stay on longer, Infected Mushroom played a 30 minute DJ set which was even harder than their live set, finishing with the track Bust a Move.

Jogy then accepted the difficult task of following on from Infected Mushroom and while the crowd seemed to disperse very quickly after the main act finished it didn’t stop him playing a wicked set. Psyche unfortunately didn’t get to play his set due to the club closing early after what had been a short but intense evening.

Infected Mushroom’s Supervisor tour was certainly something to remember. We all too frequently see international DJs playing records but it isn’t often we get to see the music created live in front of our eyes. One can only hope more of these sorts of events are to follow.