I woke up on Saturday pretty amped for this gig I must say and about ten minutes before leaving, I got a phone call from a friend saying it was at the Ambar and I had been thinking it was going to be at Heat all week for some reason. A bit disappointed as I find the Ambar claustrophobia inducing and parking always a nightmare we made our way down anyway and lo and behold there’s a line as usual. Turns out, the line is a wicked way to spend the night. I talked to a few characters and got to see someone play a trick on their mate by telling him the tickets had sold out and they had to find somewhere else to go, only to whip out tickets and surprise the chap with a happy birthday which put a smile on my face and a few of the other people in line too. I got a few standard remarks such as “Is that fur real” and “You look really warm in that, can I wear it” which shows clothes can definitely be a real ice breaker, so wear something unique if you want to meet people is my advice. For some reason people seemed to think I worked at the Ambar and were asking me who Grooverider was!!

So I told them he was the godfather of dnb and they ere going to have an awesome night, but really even I realised I’ve dubbed a lot of other producers godfathers of dnb. Grooverider first delved in hip hop about 20 odd years ago progressing to dnb and was indispensable in shaping the ground breaking early sounds and every dnb fan out there definitely owns an mp3, vinyl or cd with Grooverider on it I reckon. He’s graced our presence here on the west coast a few times but to be honest I found his mixing a bit sloppy the last time he was here (the green herb might have something to do with that) and was keen to check him out again.

Anyway we finally got in to the sounds of Packer who in my opinion never disappoints. He consistently delivers crowd pleasers and knows how to read the crowd teasing and taking you almost to the place you want to be and then backing down and then going back again. Without going into a list of tracks, he dropped some Makoto and Bukem and of course Landslide, his own production with Mc Assassin, which has been making the rounds these days.

Sardi was up next and this man is one to watch and I reckon he’ll be doing big things one day. Definitely tight, hard and fast his tune selection seemed to please most but a chinstroker whispered (well yelled really) in my ear that he kept hyping him up only for the next track to be a bit down tempo which I agreed with. There seemed little constancy, but plenty of variety.

Then someone grabbed my waist and said excuse me knocking my pen out of my hand and I turned around only to see it was the man himself making his way through the crowd to the stage. I think my mates were more excited than me at this point. Anyway up he went letting Sardi finish off while he smoked a “cigarette”. At the distance I was at I can’t confirm, deny nor do I want to condone his actions either so we’ll leave it at that.

What can I say about the man himself? He absolutely destroyed poor little Ambar with his thumping, heart racing beats. It sounded like the sound system had been tweaked just to accommodate him and after hearing poor reviews from a mate overseas I found his set exactly the opposite. It was energising, it balanced dark with light and most importantly it was fun. I think fun is too underrated these days with all the chinstroking that goes with virtually every genre of music. He assassinated the crowd with some new plates such as Mampi Swifts and Fresh’s – Play me which was dying to do just that and classics by Noisia and Cause for Concern and he also played Roni Size’s – sing, one of my favourites. His track selection was absolutely faultless. Mixing was first-rate and he even went a bit over the 2 hours he was scheduled for but as expected there were no complaints.

I stayed for Daemos’s set and have to say at that hour of the morning big ups to everyone that didn’t leave and was still busting on the floor. He kept well into the morning with Diamond D finishing up. To summarise, Grooverider = the shiznit.