Well, techno in Perth. Who’d have thought this would happen again? With the inundation of various other electronic music styles in our fair city, it is quite easy to leave the predecessors on the back burner in favour of those other ‘popular’ types to make a quick buck.

Anyway, I’ll leave it there before launching into a genre bashing tirade. Techno was back. I was happy. The techno crew were happy. This night would be a blast.

Stepping into Heat midway through DJ Rito’s set saw the new breed giving it a spin for the few early gatherers. Rito was spinning up some easy listening minimal type stuff to ease everyone into the mood. I quite enjoyed the selection, which included lots of airy-fairy beats with an electro flavour that was well tuned for the casual atmosphere going on at the time.

d-JCB took over a little late, kicking on with the minimal experience, but going a bit heavier on the bass to try and liven up the room a bit. At this stage, there still weren’t all that many people, with probably about 30 in the room. I was getting a bit worried that the night was doomed to failure, with people forgetting what techno actually was. I personally thought that some of the early mixing from him was a bit lacklustre, but I think he was just experimenting considering that it was a warm up set with no-one really to play to. This was probably not ideal for a visiting DJ.

At this point I thought it would be good to check out the upstairs room at this stage to see what was happening, and maybe find where all the people were hiding. Upstairs turned out to be a fairly small room, with an even smaller number of people, many of them DJs for the night. Radar (the number one girl of Perth electro (well the only one that I saw anyway)) was kicking out the electro tunes for the few gathered, dropping in the occasional acid riff from tunes such as This Ain’t Chicago, before handing over the decks to the upstanding pairing of leonm and utting for a minimal showdown. These two threw down a good selection with flawless mixing and a smooth range for what could essentially be dubbed the chill-out room (there was a couch). Top effort!

Back in the main room saw Kriece playing a selection of tech-house tunes which finally saw a few people get up and dance. Up until this point I had assumed that the dance floor was off limits, but the brave ventured out there to show appreciation for the quality mix from Kriece.

Brad Raven, event organiser extraordinaire, took over from Kriece, immediately kicking on with a harder sound that probably didn’t slot neatly in between the two sets, but was a nice change from all those before. Brad mixed well and got the crowd going, lifting the atmosphere in the place. Although not full, the room did have a lot more people in it, but there was obviously a lot of room to move which made a nice change from the usual overcrowded Heat venue.

Dave Pham was next up, killing off Brad’s last track to start off with his own intro, ranging back into minimal sounds. This he kept up for probably the first half hour before laying down Spastik and mixing in a couple of funky sounding tracks, then going AWOL on the minimal and crossing over into tech house territory. Dave’s mixing was superb throughout his extended set, which crossed over from minimal to chunky to electro and back, all the while retaining a smooth journey feel without disrupting the flow of beats. The crowd also enjoyed this set, with probably the biggest gathering for the night wandering on and off the dance floor.

All too soon though it was over, with jdubs taking over, immediately launching into a badass set of banging tunes that pretty much just blew the crowd away. Multiple cross fader cuts and spin backs dominated this set, which I unfortunately had to cut short due to illness. I therefore apologise to the remainder of the DJs for the lack of review, as I had to go home sick.

All up the night seemed to be enjoyed by those there, but the comments from the punters afterwards seemed to contain a mixed bag, with Heat probably being nominated as worst venue lately in terms of sound and security, and the upstairs room I thought was just an add on and didn’t really do much for the DJs playing in there. That said and done though, I respect any promoter who is willing to bring techno talent to Perth, so big ups to the Eternity crew for doing just that.