The first stop of the Australian Tour featuring Above & Beyond, Eddie Halliwell, Matt Hardwick and Cosmic Gate, was none other than Queensland’s very own super club, Family.

Not having to wait very long in the VIP line, which incidentally was much longer than general entry, upon walking past foyer security into the upstairs area of the main room, I was overcome with that familiar Friday night feeling, but the extra special atmosphere clearly indicated that tonight wasn’t a regular Friday at Family. It was about 10:40pm and two of the resident Family All-Stars – Syke & TyDi had the place absolutely rocking, certainly the Basement dance floor was a little more occupied than most nights at this rather early hour. In fact these guys were in such good form on this night that many nominated our All-Stars as playing the highlight set of the evening.

There was much hype and anticipation associated with the return of each headliner, all of whom have visited our shores annually for the past few years, except Matt Hardwick who by his own admission said “It’s been too long since I’ve played here”. Taking over from our local residents, the first of the Internationals – Matt Hardwick appeared rather pleased as he was welcomed to the console accompanied by lots of cheering from the crowd. Obviously at ease, it wasn’t long before Matt found his groove where all DJ God’s before him had graced us with their presence. As though calling on higher forces, Matt was clearly gathering the power from the ambience in the room, and transferring that into the delivery of his DJ performance. With a few tracks in Insigma’s – Open Your Eyes had captured my body and soul and lifted me to a wonderful state of being. It was a real treat to hear a very solid classic trance set, with Matt staying true to his early beginnings.

For those trainspotters, or the keen folk who like to cross-check the tune identification from the sets, Matt was very kind to have supplied the titles that have made up his sets here in Australia. All of these, including those recognised by our resident ITM identification-whores (in particularly plan_b) are: Mike Koglin vs Mark Pledger – Ultraviolet, Ali Wilson & Lee Osbourne – Yeke Techy (Askew rework), Steve Birch – Balearic Bay, Marnix – Intuition (Martin Roth mix), Deems – Tears of Hope, Cartel – For the Record, Digital Nature – Oasis, Filterheads – Cartagena, Agnelli & Nelson – Gravity, Nu NRG – Last Experience, Tilman Urmacher – Pride in Your Eyes (Martin Roth mix), Matt Hardwick vs Smith & Pledger – Connected (Matt Hardwick edit), Anna Nalick – Breathe (Blake Jardel mix), Locate vs Jonas Steur – Sobre Silente, O’Callaghan & Kearney – Exactly, Gabriel & Dresden – Tracking Treasure Down, Guiseppe Ottaviani – Linking People and Until Monday.

By 12:30am, the crowd at Family was no means near capacity, while definitely not overcrowded, and it had probably reached the maximum number of bodies that would be present for the entire gig. Everybody was very comfortable at this stage, every nook and cranny, lounge chair, and private booth was occupied; and many had marked their territory on the dance floor and adorning podiums.

Up next to deliver the aural goods were Tony McGuiness and Jono Grant, the two-thirds of Above & Beyond who were touring Australia this year. On top of their game right now, these fast rising stars of the Global trance world, were the artists I was most eager for, having missed them last year. Returning after twelve months, from “the best tour we’d ever done at any point in time”, the Above & Beyond boys were clearly in their element being here again carrying the Godskitchen banner. With their recently released artist album Tri State, their tour was certain to showcase many of the included tracks. As expected they opened with the beautiful Robert Nickson remix of Tri State, followed by remixes of a few other tracks off their album including – World on Fire, and Stealing Time. Much to the disappointment of many who were expecting ‘Alone Tonight’ to be played, it wasn’t to be. Containing mostly Anjunabeat signed tunes and some of their side-project tracks including their Oceanlab – Sky Falls Down with the gorgeous vocals of Justine Suissa, Above & Beyond had the entire Family crowd wanting more, and they kept delivering. These days many renowned and pure trance DJ’s have mixed things up a little throwing in some electro or typically house-type tracks into their sets. Very smart in capturing the ‘commercial’ crowd who were present at Family on this occasion, the floor erupted when they committed Cassandra Fox – Touch Me (Mike Koglin remix); I think we all flashed-back to tune made famous by Rui Da Silva some few years ago now. Adding to the mix, they dropped Planet Funk’s – Chase the Sun (Sonicvibe pres. Vadran Bootleg mix), which brought memories of the actual band having played their original right there in that room back in April 2003. An hour and a half hardly seemed long enough for the duo, but on this night should we really have complained given the quality of artists we were fortunate to have the pleasure of !?

One of the most anticipated moments of the night, well actually it was 2am in the morning by this stage, was the transition from Above & Beyond to the one and only Eddie Halliwell – a pure DJ-only artist known globally for his scratching and amazing technical ability. Thanks to modern day technology and the wonderful world-wide-web, many of us ITM forum-goers had viewed some video footage, courtesy of Godskitchen, of Eddie’s last appearance at Air. True to Eddie’s form we’d previewed, and for those who were fortunate enough to see him up close two years ago in the very same DJ booth, although now with the latest Pioneer mixer at his fingertips, what was to follow was extraordinary. After teasing us with a little scratching out of the final track played by Above & Beyond, Eddie had the floor as the CDJ came to a stop and Hakka invited us to give it up for the boys, as he acknowledged Halliwell. Well flanked by his touring colleagues inside the DJ booth, and anybody else outside who could see, Eddie was watched over by many in sheer amazement as he worked the new mixer like no other DJ had before; his hand action – scratching, sliding the fader, and working over the punch button, was unbelievable, but uniquely Halliwell.

Unable to stay much longer than a few tracks into one of the UK’s rising superstar DJ’s set, by all accounts the hard dance champion, continued to connect with crowd, giving them plenty of fire and energy in his music, which is what one would expect from Eddie. Following on, the German hard dance heavyweights in Cosmic Gate, Nic Chagall & DJ Bossi, played the closing set of the night apparently well into the 6th hour of the morning. According to reports, their DJ set has changed a little compared to previous years, and while many were expecting traditional Cosmic Gate hard trance, their sound was a little different. With the release of their third album Earth Mover coinciding with the Australia Tour, their DJ set was very representative of the album, a mix of vocal and instrumental and a lot of progressive tracks. So as reported elsewhere, Bossi said their DJ set was to have the whole range of progressive, trancy, and tech-influenced tunes.

All in all, we’ve come to expect so much from the world famous Godskitchen, and while not everybody will have been completely satisfied, we’ll always remain fortunate and grateful for the next tour of the Godskitchen party!