Upon arrival at Yu, after trekking from the city because my chums were too stingy to hire two cabs, my little legs were aching for a bit of a rest. Fretting about the inevitable wait for club entry, the suddenly chilly Sydney weather made me reluctant to accept the challenge. But YU was different. Outside… nobody waited. Immediately my suspicions were aroused. Truth is, nobody waited outside because the Hijackers were eager to fill up the place inside rather than out. Immediately impressed – two points! The doorbitch whinged about her character description in last week’s review… I’m not sure what she expected me to say, but ladyhere’s your mention anyhoot!

Despite it being 11.30 it seemed rather dark inside, and for some absurd reason I felt like I was walking into one of the bar scenes in Return of the Jedi. De-cloaked, we plonked our rears on the nearest available ledge, settling in to the sounds of Jonathan Wall on decks. I had to double-check the set times, mind you, because it was an entirely different sound to that of other times I have caught him. Nevertheless I was pleasantly surprised and grooved along to a perfectly compatible mix-up of hip hop and electro… The Chemical Brothers’ Galvanize mixed in with Jungle Boogie, progressing into some scratchy robo-electronica then back to hip-hop, I realised that THIS was the sort of variety I had been searching for.

Puffing and panting due to the lack of air con, I breathed a sigh of relief when the side room was opened up and I could escape the crowd for a sec. I thought Wall would be a hard act to follow, but Q45 complimented him just fine. A quick summation of Q45’s set - lots of tracks I’d heard before but not nearly enough to hate, and plenty I hadn’t heard but could easily love! Bang Bang (Audio Bullys’ new track) and Sander K’s The Fruit blended in amongst some faster breakbeat sounds, tinged with disco and more hip-hop, put an end to my short-lived break.

The lighting man stood stealthily beside his setup all night, synchronising light with sound much to the delight of the crowd. Then in a crafty switch, Poxymusic’s Ken Cloud (possibly disguised as a Lighting Engineer with his identical laptop), began banging out some tracks. It finally struck me that Poxymusic’s ‘live act’ was really a live mixed set, which had some of the tech-aware guys in awe. Face illuminated by his computer screen, Cloud was expressionless. I deduce that he must have been using ESP to determine what everyone wanted to hear, I didn’t feel ignored for a moment. The top tracks came down the stairs in pairs: Freestylers’ Get A Life and Kid Alex’s Young Love (Topless), both included on Clubber’s Guide to ‘04 mixed by Poxy. Also played was the duo’s mix of Nubreed’s One Day (awesome track), Ferry Corsten’s Rock Your Body, Rock, Alter Ego’s Rocker and their new single Our Break. An excellent, if not somewhat recycled, set.

I was so impressed by their predecessors that the sight of Kid Kenobi and MC Shureshock to me implied a royal finish. Unfortunately I had been doing so much boogieing that no amount of Shureshock’s shaking and screaming or Kenobi tracks were gonna keep me upright. My thighs wanted to head home. It really was a night/morning of bootie-shaking. If peeps were dancing their asses off I couldn’t blame them. Wait a minute… where’s MY ass?! I’ll have to pop back next week to pick it up.