When I first stepped outside my front door, my first thought was that we would not see a massive crowd at Slinky as it was bloody freezing. Seeing the number of free parking spaces and lack of people around the Palace, it looked as expected, until I walked inside and there was a very sizeable crowd forming.

Your Slinky crowd is obviously hard house fanatics as a rule, which generally ensures plenty of colour, energy and madcap dancing. On this occasion it also ensured a fairly large dose of blokes in the crowd. But much to my surprise, the crowd in itself wasn’t that “blokey” and felt really good being amongst that many people. I love the colour and classical rave outfits of the regulars!

Papa Smurf was rocking the decks when I walked in—a bit of a shock to the system to hear pretty hard trance being cranked out any time before midnight. But as always he mixed seamlessly and for a pre-midnight crowd, there was plenty of people on the floor REALLY getting into it. Every now and then he played something a little more melodic, a little trancey, but in general it was pretty high-energy stuff which the crowd just lapped up. Note – he did do the fade out thing for which he is known and loved, but not to the xs that some suggest! Top set.

Following a pretty heavy lead act, it was always going to be hard for John Fleming to continue, so he did what all great DJs should do and recreated the feeling, the vibe and the pace by slowing things down and mixing it up a bit for two or three songs. From there he built it, and kept it pretty heavy for the majority of his set.

Recent interviews with j00f suggest he is tending towards more of a psychedelic focus, and last time I saw him play it was definitely quite psychedelic. However this time there was only a hint of psy—may be more focused on delivering the harder style most of the fans wanted to see. There was enough variation and definitely enough to keep things interesting.

Whilst not my specific taste, the harder music definitely delivered, kept the crowd on the dancefloor (again, a very well-behaved crowd) and plenty of smiles and enjoying themselves. His mixing was great and his set very enjoyable.

After j00f came on Scott Bond, continuing seamlessly from j00f – pretty hard, maybe a little more melodic than psy. I probably hung for the first two or three songs of his set, and then wandered into hear Anne Savage in the side room.

One of the best moves I made. It made me appreciate that maybe j00f was playing more melodic and psychedelic as the sound in the side room was quite hard and dry. But the fans in the room were clearly loving what she was doing and really getting into the tunes – that feeling alone was enough to stay and listen for a few songs. Plenty of room to move, people really getting into the music and Anne clearly enjoying herself on the decks. For a side room it was really rocking. Questionably there was an even better atmosphere in the side room and the main room at that point.

Overall, I was really impressed with the evening. Plenty of faithful fans got themselves out for the night and partied of their last long weekend until cup weekend. Paramedics showing a friendly presence, but staying out of the way. The sound was pretty clear, not too loud, visually a great job had been done.

It was more than enough to tempt me back to Slinky 2007.