You can tell that summer is nearly upon us when Perth’s dance music community heads out to Belmont Racecourse for the annual start of what looks set to be a long line of quality festivals. 2005 saw the creation of Sub Culture, a fresh new locally produced all night electronic music festival set over four arenas using 3 floors and the outside area of Belmont Racecourse and featured one of the biggest collections of international artists for a WA event. One of these rooms, the Renaissance arena, was located farthest from the entry on the ground floor and played host to many discerning punters, many fine looking ladies and a killer lineup of DJs of the house variety.

The small crowd of people arriving at Belmont early enough to catch the first hour of local DJs would have been treated to the smooth tech house sounds of Adam Kytka and Warren 10 who warmed up nicely for the night ahead, dropping some funky tracks coupled with smooth mixing skills. Terry Waites, the man with the first solo set of the night in the Renaissance arena, took over at a little past 10pm and continued to build the mood further, carrying on with the tech house style laid down by the opening DJs. His set showed some variety in style and quality mixing, picking up a bit of a swing towards the end and drawing on a few vocal and instrumental samples.

Someone who has been enjoying considerable attention lately due to his quality production skills is local Perth lad Kriece, who cut the music at the start of his set and kicked his hour off with a vocal sample followed by some bouncy tech house. His set featured a few of his own productions, which was impressive to see, and he built the mood up well, getting fairly tough and melodic towards the end of his set.

As midnight drew close the Renaissance room began to get pretty busy in anticipation for a certain USA DJ who had built himself a strong following in Perth after an excellent performance in 2004. Chris Fortier has been gaining in popularity on the international stage following various productions and mixes, most recently his mix CD Balance 007 available on EQ. Fortier dropped the tempo somewhat at the start of his set and started things off on the progressive house tip. As his set progressed he started to drop some more twisted beats and acid-influenced tracks. By the end of his time on the decks, Fortier was banging out some very tough progressive, but melodic tunes that had most people in the Renaissance arena dancing like crazy.

Without a doubt the man with the biggest following, the smiling DJ James Zabiela was next to appear on the lineup and the crowd’s excitement when he began setting up his unique DJ setup was obvious. Zabiela started his set with some of his trademark CDJ looping and effects before getting stuck into a quality tech house show. Unfortunately about 5 minutes into his set the speaker to the right of the stage cut out due to a cable problem, but luckily Zabiela carried his own and was able to get both speaker stacks working again after a minor delay. He worked his way through many tech house and progressive tracks including Luke Dzierzek – Echo all the while using the many tools at his disposal to add effects and create loops to complement his set. After finishing up, Zabiela even came out and mingled with the crowd and signed various records and clothing items, showing his appreciation for the fans that had been there to see him.

Mark Farina had the difficult task of following on next and started his set with some more relaxed, downtempo funky house. While initially there were a large number of people in the Renaissance arena having just been listening to Zabiela, the more funky sounds of Farina seemed to send a large number of people away in search of something more upbeat. His set was technically very good, dropping vocal samples from artists like Jamiroquai and drawing on a few more commercial influences such as electro remix of Gwen Stefani – Hollaback Girl, but its timing was not ideal. Putting Farina on earlier would have given the Renaissance lineup a better structure and maybe kept a greater number of people in the room for longer since going from banging tech and progressive to funky house often seems to kill the vibe.

The final international of the night, Nic Fanciulli of Skylark fame, started his set at 5:20am but was unfortunate to be handed over to a fairly empty room. He took the tempo up a notch while staying with a predominantly tech house style and managed to get a few more dances out of the now very tired crowd. He played a quality set, but the dwindling crowd numbers meant that the Renaissance arena was closed early thus cutting him short.

The Renaissance arena provided a refuge for the more discerning punters who were not as interested in ‘hard’ music compared to funky, tech or progressive house sounds. While all DJs in this room were good in their own right, the lineup could have been better structured to make the transition from each DJ smoother and more suitable, putting funkier DJs on earlier and more banging DJs like Fortier and Zabiela on towards the end.