I rocked up to the infamous Mitchell Rock Climbing Centre with no real preconceptions of what the night would be like – I was keen to see how it all went, but trance has for quite some time been too slow for my liking. That being said however, I always seem to have a great time at our trance events here in Canberra. It could be the friendly yet not overwhelming crowds, it could be the top notch production, it could be all of these – or it could be that maybe deep inside, I love trance, but I doubt it – but whatever it is, it always leaves me wanting more. This night was no exception to the rule, as much as I had a feeling of ‘this music is too slow, I think I’m going to fall asleep’ for much of the night, I still enjoyed the night greatly.

As soon as I arrived I heard the uplifting sounds of Enerv8, while the crowd was still small, it was quickly growing, and things were looking set for a good night. The first thing I noticed was the effort that had been put into the decor, probably one of the most impressive setups I’ve seen at a Canberra party. While some people did comment that the dummies hanging from the roof did look like dead bodies, I think it gave the whole arena a kind of eerie feel to it. It wasn’t just the dummies either, the Space team had obviously spent hours getting this place set up, and it was worth it. Enerv8 played a tight set of trance, sometimes driving, sometimes techy, and definitely driving.

Next up was Peekz and Artemis, better known as Artemeekz, these two must’ve played more sets together than I’ve eaten meals. As usual it was a bit of a back and forth, Artemis constantly trying to bring a slightly harder edge to it, and Peekz trying to cut it back to the more uplifting. It wasn’t long before our trance hero Fast Twitch took over the decks with Kriss from Melbourne, it was the first time I’d heard Kriss play and I was definitely impressed, while I wouldn’t go so far as to call it hard trance, it was definitely a harder edged set.

Things definitely got harder at this point, Frodo and JFX took things into the realms of hard dance, and I finally felt comfortable. I remember hearing The Prophet – Emergency Call at one point, which was more than enough to get me out of my seat and stomping. This was the point at which I reckon the crowd hit it’s peak, there probably would’ve been 250 people there, a very decent effort. Again, a really tight set from these guys, faultless on a technical level – but that’s what I’ve come to expect from the most of these guys. Loose Cannon and Exa-cist definitely kept things hard for their set, but toward the end, allowed it to slow down a bit for an easy transition into the uplifting sounds of Simon Hunter. ‘Simo’ has definitely shown some real talent behind the decks over the last 6 months or so, he’s only pretty young, but definitely a future star. He played one and a half hours of ‘hands in the air’ tracks that left the fans of uplifting yearning for more – props to him.

The Space crew once again pulled together an outstanding event, Premier Audio delivered great quality sound, and the DJs delivered some top notch mixing. Who knows, with events like these, I might find myself enjoying trance in a few years time.