The Monkey Bar opened at 10pm and the first thing that was immediately noticeable was the absence of a gargantuan line extending halfway around the block as was the case with Metros. Those opting for a speedy, relatively painless entry to the event were treated to the mellow, yet funky tech house sounds of Boy warming up in the Plastik arena in the main room of the Monkey Bar. The Plastik arena had been scheduled for the outdoor courtyard area behind Amplifier but a last minute change saw the rooms switched and a few lineup adjustments were made to accommodate various acts. Puff, the next local DJ on the lineup, followed on with some similarly funky tech house, adding in an element of swing before moving away somewhat from a funky style. The second part of his set consisted of some electro which then moved towards a straight up banging techno set, pumping up the growing crowd for what was to follow.

The Plastik arena’s first international, Goldtrix, stepped up to the plate at midnight to a fairly busy Monkey Bar. His set was a mix of vocal house and techno with some old and some new tracks, such as G Club Presents Banda Sonora – Guitarra G. The quality of mixing was tight, although his track selection did not appear to have any real direction and he could have benefited from exhibiting a greater level of crowd interaction, although most people were more than happy to groove along to his set for an hour.

Next we were treated to a real treat with Australia’s best live breaks acts Nubreed, consisting of its three members: Jase, DB & Mykel. The boys started off with some downtempo breaks, warming up the crowd nicely while clearly getting into their performance themselves which is always enjoyable to see. As their set progressed they pulled out some harder, electro-sounding breaks, giving their set the unique flavour for which Nubreed have become famous for. They gave a stellar performance, holding a captive audience from start to finish.

Local DJ Kenny L was given the difficult task of following on from Nubreed and warming up for Fergie for forty five minutes between 2:15-3am. Kenny began his set with some downtempo electro-house with his trademark scratching. Initially crowd numbers began to dwindle as breaks fans left the Plastik arena, but quickly rose again in preparation for Fergie. Kenny’s set was well received, moving from an electro-house beginning, through techno and finally arriving at tech-trance, featuring tracks like Tomaz vs Filterheadz – Sunshine, Randy Katana – Fancy Fair 2005 and the classic New Order – Blue Monday.

Fergie, possibly the most hyped DJ after Deep Dish, arrived next to take over the DJ duties but I was to find that the hype surrounding the Irish DJ was largely unjustified. He began his set with some electro with tracks like Alter Ego – Rocker and some less well-known ones. Some of the crowd that had been expecting Fergie to play hard from the outset looked somewhat amusing as they tried to dance to an alien style of music. A very annoying quirk throughout his set was his tendency to randomly cut the music without any apparent deliberate timing and ‘hype’ himself up. Another strange characteristic of his set was his MC’s request for the ladies to dance on the stage in front of Fergie. These two features made him appear quite arrogant and the dwindling numbers during his set showed that many people were not receptive to such displays. Having said this, the hard house and techno tracks he played in the later stages of his set, including classics like Storm – Time to Burn and Fatboy Slim – Star 69, went down well with the majority of the crowd in the Plastik arena. However, his beat matching skills were shaky and quite often tracks were not even mixed at all, instead opting to cut from one track to another. It was obvious that he had been drinking heavily and probable that his performance suffered as a result.

The quality of acts in the Plastik arena was good overall and the lineup was well structured to put the more banging acts at the end and funkier acts earlier on. Something last night made me think about was a level of professionalism that should be maintained during any performance – I would have to suggest that drinking should be kept to a moderate level before and during performances, leaving drunken antics for afterwards.