A million thankyous to both Aquasky and Ambar for restoring my faith in what possible riches a night on the town may/can/should offer a punter.  After the embarrassingly pompous debacle of the Cody ChesnuTT gig the night previous – it was beyond pleasing to descend (first with trepidation) into the very bowels of the earth only to emerge (trepidation-cleansed) five hours hence with semi-permanent hearing difficulties, cramping calves/quadriceps and an immeasurably full-on smile plastered/fixed firmly on my dial.  Fresh from their top 50 placing in Djmag’s poll of the world’s best (DJ-rated) nightclub venues – Ambar once again attracts a first-class international act to pack out the bowels of its premises and reek bloody slaughter upon its dance-floor.  Good freaking work fellas! 

On with the review:

Finished work around midnight.  Pointed my little buttocks in a Perth-wards direction.  Zoom.  Zoom.  Zoomed.  Arrived at an ungodly hour to find both an excellent street-side parking space and an excellent local DJ on the decks.  Micah that is – strutting his DJ stuff in the depths of the Ambar hobbit-hole.  Largely instrumental nu-breaks stuff to begin with – travelling into more vocal crowd-pleasers as his set wore on.  The crowd was fairly sparse upon my entrance (although there was a very good number of attractive ladies in attendance) – numbers certainly picking up as the little hand made its circuitous journey past the one.  Micah managed to impress/tenderise/fluff-til-about-to-blow the waiting crowd like the support-slot maestro he is – but there was only one thing that was going to bring this jiggling crowd to climax (well three things if you wish to be a technical nerdo) – the boys from Aquasky.

< boom >

And climax we did.  Gush.  Spurt.  Flow.  Again and again.  Over and over.  A set of super-tantric ultra-generous pinnacles as the boys from our Monarchistic Motherland took us firmly/forcefully within their gentle/skilful hands and blew at once our minds and nether-regions.  Starting off all fresh and nu-school they gradually mixed it up a notch – running us back through their early d’n’b days and then right back where we’d started and conversely where they finished.  Booming bass.  Cranking beats.  Bells and bobs and whistles.  At all times pumping out a sound that was fresh and crisp and oh-so-slamming.  A lot derived from their ultra-recent long-player “Teamplayers”: the bad-ass-breakbeat-crunch of their Meat Katie team-up “Overneath”; the dirty-bitch-queen-electro-epic that is the El-Hornet (Pendulum) combo “Girls and Boys”; the funky “Good Sound” with the Breakfastaz.  Plus a slew of up-tempo-ed remixes: Daft Punk “Round the World”/ “Harder, Better, Faster, Stronger”; Damien Marley’s “Welcome to Jamrock”; even the Detroit Grand Pubah’s “Sandwiches” (amongst others).  The crowd kept in a continually gyrating state of enthralled/sweaty/blurred/wet bedazzlement. 

Mark my words peoples – these boys are gonna be real big real soon.  Ready to join the hallowed ranks of such beats-compatriots as Pendulum, Freestylers, Prodigy.  To grab their share of the spoils from the mainstream-acceptance pie (all whilst maintaining a semblance of their indie genre cred).  And for all of us who were there – in Ambar – in the very early hours of this wintry Sunday morning, we can turn to one another with a wan smirking grin and say “Remember how we knew them before they was famous..” (like the pretentious big-noting twats we are)...

Best night in a long long while.

Rock on

Heronimous Wang