What do you get when you mix a big crowd, cheap beer, nipple sucking, Spinning Lady, Brisbane’s biggest techno exports and one of Switzerland’s hottest techno DJs? MELT of course!

After being greeted by Melt’s resident door bitches, I was glad to hear the sounds of everyone’s favourite womble, Orinoko. A quick glance around the corner to the dance floor revealed that the DJ box had been set up on the opposite side of the room to normal, creating a lot more dance floor for the crowd that had already started to build up. Then all of a sudden a blur of white fabric caught my eyes, and there dancing in elegant circles across the floor was Brisbane’s infamous ‘Spinning Lady’. Her presence alone, a sign of how big this night was going to be, as an event without her, is an event not worth talking about. Could she be the face to cover the next Melt flyer? I think so.

The more I listened to Orinoko’s set, the more I believed that this was no warm up set I was hearing. Talk about give Deetron a run for his money. By the time his set had finished half the crowd had already burnt off enough energy to run Energex for a week or so. Then the man we had all been waiting for, hit the decks. Having missed him during his last visit to Brisbane, I was very happy to finally have the chance of seeing Deetron play, a man whose music I have been listening to for many years. His track selection was very impressive, keeping the crowd constant through his entire set. I certainly haven’t seen so many Brisbanites sweating to techno since Richie Hawtin hit our shores. His constant changing of records made it nearly impossible to identify what was a bootleg and what was two tracks layering upon one another. Highlights for me, were when he dropped a bootleg featuring French Kiss and later on Josh Wink’s 516 Acid. Speaking of acid, Deetron managed to sneak in quite a few acid based tracks in his last half an hour or so, making the crowd sweat even more.

Next on the bill was Brisbane’s biggest techno export Kazu Kimura. Always one to impress, Kazu started off his set, continuing the thumping techno that Deetron had built up. The crowd however, slowly started to dwindle away. To be honest, I don’t think Brisbane’s techno crowd, had experienced such a workout in a long time, particularly after Orinoko’s ‘warm up’ set and most punters began to resort to the comfort of neighbouring chairs. Highlights of Kazu’s set include a bootleg of Laurent Garnier’s Crispy Bacon and later on a track by DJ Funk. Overall Kazu’s set was quite pleasing, though I felt the last half of his set slowed the pace a little too much for my liking. By the time Magoo had came on, numbers on the floor had dwindled dramatically, but a slight speed up in pace, made a few more take to it once more.

Melt, will definitely go down as one of Brisbane’s best techno highlights for the year and I am sure most will be looking forward to the next Melt event as much as they will be looking forward to Spinning Lady’s next move.