As Australia’s leading dance-music website, inthemix takes on a fairly large role in the electronic music community by providing an informative and friendly interface for like-minded people to discover more about music and events around their town. Each year ITM polls its users to find out who the most popular DJs are each state, and subsequently for the whole country.
On Saturday night Australia’s leading nightclub played host to a killer party with an immensely talented DJ lineup which spanned multiple genres. Having recently changed hands, it was a good opportunity for Home to show off its new-found eclecticism in providing a range of music styles. It was also a good opportunity to test their new sound system, and damn that main room bass sounded good!
It does seem a little strange writing a review of an event run by the organisation I am writing for, but we pride ourselves on objectivity of reviews, and this one will be no different.
Arriving at about 11.30pm my crew and I managed to by-pass the massive line outside, instead heading to the rear “VIP” entrance – and boy did I feel special. We grabbed our first ice-cold alcoholic beverages and had a bit of a chat to the tunes of the Funktrust boys. These are two very talented guys, and despite having the earliest set in the breaks room they managed to slowly build the atmosphere while still having a great funky feel to it. In my opinion, Will Styles and Learned Hand are some of Sydney’s finest and best boundary-pushing DJs.
From here, it was time to go for a bit of an exploring session. Home is a massive, massive space to find your way around. In the main room the Stafford Brothers were warming up an already decent-sized crowd in replacement of Ajax, who unfortunately had to pull out at the last minute due to medical reasons. A pity, since Ajax is a personal favourite, but the Stafford Brothers certainly lived up to their reputation pumping out some golden house music. Next I made my way to the Silver Room, where Jeff Drake was smoothly mixing some laid-back chilled out progressive. I knew that would be a popular room later on as people’s dancing feet got sore.
On the Terrace Declan was throwing down some deeper and techier house, which already had quite a few people grooving away. It’s good to see the Terrace back in full swing, and I made my way back in later on in the night to catch Illya doing his thing. Having mixed one of the discs on the new inthemix 50 CD Illya has certainly proven his skill behind the turntables. He did not disappoint on Saturday, laying down some very sexy beats from 1.30-3.30am. Back to my exploration of the club, I continued into the hard room just to see what was going on. Not really my thing, especially this early on, but the hard room was being entertained by Archie and the crowd seemed to be loving it.
At this point I returned to the Main room to set up camp for a while since I was pretty keen to hear Boogs and Mark Dynamix. I really wanted to have a dance and during Boogs’ set I had a couple of really good opportunities. I heard quite a few recent club hits, but not so many classics, which I was a little disappointed with. I thought I might get to hear some of those gems that always get a crowd going, but not on this night I guess. The focus was on some massive basslines which certainly gave the sound system a run for its money, and a lot of people seemed to be really enjoying the music. Unfortunately it wasn’t exactly my cup of tea, which isn’t to say that it was bad, and the mixing was rock-solid. I stuck it out though, and definitely enjoyed some of the tracks. Mark Dynamix took to the decks at around 2am and continued along similar lines, also throwing in some great breakbeat sounds which I was pretty happy with. Tight mixing and clever use of the CDJs gave Dynamix some great moments.
I listened to most of his set before having another wander around. Firstly I headed to the Terrace with Illya, then continued to the Silver Room where Robbie Lowe was playing something between progressive and funky house. I was glad to see my earlier insight had come to fruition, this was definitely the place to come for a bit of chill out and a chin wag. The breaks room was also going strong music wise, but remained fairly empty throughout the night, which I can only blame on it’s secret location..! I caught the last moment of Greg Packer and the start of Q45, and there was some solid drum & bass then breakbeat madness going on with the small but supportive crowd.
My legs at this point were starting to resemble the consistency of jelly. So before the jelly well and truly set in I made one more to the hard room. Making a point to catch Amber Savage’s set, she proved herself to be a true master of her art and puts a lot of energy into her performance. The crowd was going absolutely nuts to her set for the half hour I was there, mainly because of the fantastic music but also because they were responded to Amber’s energy behind the decks. Her mixing skills are top notch, and I always enjoy watching her play.
This, I guess, is where my objectivity kicks in and I mention one of the not-so-cool parts of my night. It was only the one thing… And that was that I had trouble with security, which I really hadn’t expected due to the friendliness of everyone else involved with the event. I understand the stresses of being a bouncer and realise they have to put up with a lot of stuff, but being told to “move out of the fucking way before I make you move” did put a bit of a dampener on our night. Security can either add to a great night or detract from it, and in this case it was a bit of disappointment.
It was now time to head off, a little earlier than I had expected, but I was completely worn out. So all in all I had a great night, and I hope that all the work the ITM team has done over the past year paid! A lot of the music was mind-blowing, and the DJs were all top notch. A big thumbs up to all from ITM (including it’s humble reviewers and photographers!) who make the website and community what it is.
