The Mainline Express switched to the Eastern Suburbs line last Friday, pulling into Bondi Junction with a tender chock-full of techno fuel for lucky us. Top of the bill were a couple of Europeans, Deetron and Justin Berkovi, both of whom came highly recommended. But we’ll get to them in a bit.

CQ Lounge (formerly BJ’s, apparently) is situated in the middle of the uber-mall-zone which Bondi Junction has become since my last visit. In amongst the fast food outlets and discount clothing stores (my favourite being ‘Shoepermarket’) is a doorway manned by obligatory beefy blokes with bass frequencies spilling out on to the street. Past the beefy ones, down the stairs and we’re greeted with a pretty bloody large room, done in a polished pine and brass fittings style, reminding me immediately of a provincial nightclub-cum-bowling alley. The tough sound that Biz was turning out, however, dragged me immediately back from my suburban hallucination and into the real world, the reality shock driven further home by the bartender’s request for more than five dollars for a beer. A few familiar faces could be made out hiding in the cavernous lounges around the main room, and I decided to investigate the second room – a much more accomodating place, nice and small and dark and loud. The Sentinel was completing his Detroit-inspired workout as I sat down and had some conversations.

So the night progressed, Simon Caldwell turning in a much harder than usual set, the Ringtones offering wonderful music, though they seemed somewhat underwhelmed by the occasion (or so my rapidly degenerating sense of judgement perceived). Meaty Bytes followed up in the back room with his fabulous live rig – a table full of gear with no laptop in sight at all. It was too easy to get lost in the blur of his hands jittering across the millions of tweakables, creating powerful yet intricate grooves that had a good dancefloor moving, despite the presence of one of the headliners in the other room.

And so Deetron was doing his business. Three turntables, two CD decks, everything going at the same time with him in the middle mashing the effects unit and everything was tight as fuck. No mistakes here. He takes a Tejada track, EQs out everything but the bassline and leaves it in while he mixes another couple of tracks over the top, re-contextualising the smooth tech-house darling as a collaborator on a fierce tech mash-up. He goes from mad banging loopy stuff on three decks, working the mixer like a frenzied checkout assistant ‘pon the register and then all of a sudden from nowhere appears a stripped back version of ‘Good Life’. Quality DJing, no jukebox merchant he; Deetron delivered in spades. In the back room, G-Mo was playing a wicked set, all booty and hardcore and stuff, with a suitably-munted group of swayers getting messy.

Cue Berkovi. Really fucking loud and distorted drums bang out and go right over my head. People enjoyed him; I wasn’t one of them. After the delicate wonder of Deetron – who went pretty hard before you dismiss me as a pansy – the harsh aesthetic of Berkovi was not what I was looking for. In fairness, I was probably too drunk, as a quick journey to the really crazy shit N-Zed was spinning in the back room had me lurching around and then promptly declaring my undying love to anyone who’d listen. Berkovi cleared off, the backroom got shutdown and Methodixxx, Emass and Kate got up for a threeway romp which was a suitable excuse for me to prevent further verbal embarassment by jumping up and down for a while. And then it was time for bed.

Once again, the Mainline guys assembled a great collection of local tech artists, augmented them with a couple of great internationals (Berkovi might not have been to my liking but plenty folk were digging him) and gave us an evening of brilliant and diverse music. Not as many people as they’d have liked but I think the location of the party and the size of the venue worked against them (CQ Lounge was not the guys’ first choice of space). The Mainline Express is gathering momentum; we hope and pray that it is only a matter of time before the Little Train that Could gets totally out of control.