The team behind Fantasia (Silver Entertainment) and Mystic had joined forces to bring Mystic IX. As soon as I heard the venue for Mystic IX was at Girraween Indoor Sports Centre I knew I was in for a good night. The trek out wasn’t too bad, straight up the M4 and onto the Greater Western Highway and was there in 40 mins from the Shire. There was great anticipation of this party as Mystic’s always deliver a true raving experience.

The venue is an indoor centre and is great for a rave. It’s pretty clean with high ceilings and great to dance on. The promoters had laid wood down that was very dancer friendly. Production wise the promoters hadn’t left any stone unturned.  A great sound setup and lighting rig matched with multi-coloured lasers from the boys at Oracle meant our senses would be blown away. Now multi-coloured lasers means just that. Pink, green, blue, orange, red and every colour in between, sending beams to every corner of the venue, blowing the whole crowd away over the night. The DJ setup was interesting with 4 turntables and 2 mixers as back to back sets were planned all night, and it allowed for some great performances.

Kicking off preceedings were two up and comers, Kate Liz & Amorphis, who mixed some nice hard trance to warm the crowd up. The reigns were next handed over to Ctrix and Refresh (Nexus Project) who mixed up a storm of hard driving gabber that got everyone into a stomping mood. Some tight mixing from these boys, they are very much underated as DJs probably because their style isn’t that big in Sydney.

To keep the harder edge beats coming Spellbound, the king of hardstyle, and Sims, a real up & comer, stepped up to bang out a pure hard trance/hardstyle battle. One of the better sets of the night, it had the crowd well and truly up on their feet. Some great tight mixing by these guys and it was the perfect warm up set for what was to come, ending with Expansion – Walt & Feliz. Fenix and Haze stepped up next with a mixture of happy hard, both old and nu-skool, and some freeform, which was good for a change. The old school mix of Set You Free by N-Trance was a highlight for everyone in this set.

Matrix and Oky followed and this was a great set as the crowd was building up and lasers were fully on now, truly awe inspiring! Some solid hardstyle was being pumped out with great sampling and scratching which had the crowd jumping and going off. Of course Tricky Nation was played which kept the masses happy. Tom-E and Antix were next to perform, and they delivered an awesome set of aussie and UK happy hard. These two are producers on Executive Records and a lot of their own stuff got played which kept everyone going hard. The two kings of Sydney happy hard (Weaver and Suae) delivered a great set of  nu-skool happy with Weaver playing a lot of his own stuff which was great to dance to in a peak time set. They played all the favourites and the Suaeson Clan were having a mad time.

It was around this time that the Police showed up and there were fears that the party would be shut but the music just got turned down, which really sucked and (Team Sublime) Nik Fish & Amber Savage were half an hour late for their set. Amber dropped some great tracks at the start and Nik didn’t care about the cops and turned the sound back up to the cheers of the crowd. Unfortunately my legs had given in by this stage and I left just as Buggin and Midian came on. 

The crowd was great with a lot of happy punters, and everyone was great to chat to – I just wanted to dance and have a great time! The production was first class with everyone being stimulated by the lasers and sound system on the night. The music was top notch with a great mix of all styles throughout the night. Set of the night would have to be Sims vs Spellbound or Antix vs Tom-E. It was dissapointing that the sound got turned down but nonetheless was one of the better raves this year.