The Ekka holiday was on us once again… This year headlining for the harder heads of Brisbane was Pee Wee Ferris, Nick Sentience and Nik Fish. Not being a regular at the harder events, I wasn’t quite sure what my overall feeling was, but was keen to check it out all the same.

As we walked in, Family Residents, Syke, Baby Gee and TyDi were warming up the dance floor, with a mass of techy and proggy bass driven tunes. Despite getting the crowd up and dancing, the general consensus between the group of people I was with was that the music was a tad too hard for the time of night. None the less I was blessed with hearing tyDi’s new tune, a collaboration with one of Australia’s leading trance DJs Jumping Jack.

Next up was one of the few hardtrance DJs who’s yet to jump on the hardstyle bandwagon Pee Wee Ferris. Pee Wee jumped on the decks, and pushed the music up a notch with his old school UK hard trance sound – a style of music that has been in steady decline in more recent times in favour of the German hardstyle genre, a genre which myself and a lot of other’s aren’t a huge fan of. Hard trance was reported amongst friends as being ‘dead’ about 12 months ago, so it was a nice to take a trip down memory lane of once of the biggest genres of it’s time. The highlight of the night definitely was in Pee Wee Ferris’s set, hearing Mark Sherry’s updated mix of the ten year old BBE anthem ‘7 Days and One Week’.

The man behind UK hard dance label Quality Trax, and former Nukleus big gun was up next. Nick Sentience, one of the most prominent names behind another all but dead genre of dance music, hard house. The former hard house don didn’t let this phase him as he took us on an epic journey throughout the more upfront techier and psy sounds of trance. Nick started with the infamous Marcel Woods’ ‘Advanced’, one of the more mysterious and melodic driven tunes of tech trance at the moment, and certainly one of the biggest tech anthems of ’05. Sentience also played a plethora of psytrance, including the much sort after psy remixes of Faithless’ ‘Insomnia’ & Prodigy’s ‘Voodoo People’. Other highlights of Nick’s set included Jacques Lu Cont’s ‘Jacques Your Body’ (Nick Sentience mix), Wippenburg’s ‘Neurodancer’(Nick Sentience mix), Perplex’s ‘City of Dusts, Nick Sentience’s ‘Corona’ and another older uplifting trance anthem of the night, his remix of the old Ferry Corsten and Vincent de Moor collaboration, Veracocha’s ‘Carte Blanche’.

Next on the bill was one of Australia’s leading hardstyle DJs, Nik Fish. While I’m not a fan of hardstyle myself, Nik’s technical skill is something that’s not to be coughed at. Nik performed well last year, though this time he was unaccompanied by partner and fellow hardstyle DJ Amber Savage. Unfortunately it was time for me to go, despite Nik not going down the hardstyle route on the night in favour of more techtrance sounds

Last year’s event with Agnelli and Nelson might’ve been a little more my flavour, but Family rarely fails to put on a good night. The line-up was in a fairly similar style, couple of Sydney DJs and a UK headliner. The pick of the night for me was probably the local’s warm-up set, Baby Gee, Syke and TyDi, but the other acts were definitely fine tuned in their craft. Overall the night was a big success, the music wasn’t 100% me for the whole of the night, but that’s just my personal choice. The company and crowd definitely made up for it though. Listening to the harder sounds, I’m quite curious to see what Uberdruck’s ‘The Crow’ will do when headline The Family, along prog man of the moment Andy Moor.