You just know something good is going to happen when you walk into a club and the first thing you see is a big group of hot chickadees dancing their little asses off to Sneaky Sound System’s I Love It. Indeed, it was the sign of good things to come on the night, and it took place in a club that always gives everyone its all – the Chinese Laundry.

It started off for me with Steve Lind rockin’ the decks in the upstairs Sandbar, who was dressed up funky enough to get into Smut if he wanted to (and we all know how hard it can be to get into there). I’ve never seen such a diverse-looking crowd of people mixing together so well in my life. It was like the Sandbar had transformed into the Greenwood with all the gorgeous women decked out in head bands and stripy dresses, prancing around and ‘Bang Gangin’ on the dance floor, mixing freely with all the Chinese Laundry regulars and other assorted oddballs. With all these people packed out in the one spot, it was an awesome site to see.

Mr Lind had the perfect tracks laid out to get this combo crowd going, busting out everything from old classics like Michael Jackson’s Billy Jean through to your other modern favorites, dropping in the odd party hip-hop stormer like House of Pain’s Jump Around, which managed to get every person in the club linked arm-in-arm and jumping around like crazy. Perhaps this was in anticipation of the international guest, because up next was UK party hip-hop favourites The Nextmen – and boy did they get the place fired up quickly! The sandbar was jam packed in no time at all and you could just feel the good vibes flying around the room as everyone mixed, mingled and danced away to many more of the classic oldies that were getting busted out – one of my personal favourites would have been the Jackson Five’s I Want You Back. A special compliment to the Nextmen for having the gift of choosing songs that just seemed to bounce off each other and kept the crowd in a constant state of happiness.

The Laundry’s main room lived up to expectations of providing a good night from beginning to end, giving everything it had all night long. Fortunately this time it didn’t suffer from overcrowding and I think many people were grateful to move around more freely (I know I was). The DJ talent on display included Ashley Feraude, Jeff Drake and Matt Nugent who gave the crowd all the best that upfront house has to offer. To my ears they all seemed to have similar styles, but I would have happily listened to any one of them doing their own thing for the entire night – all three of them were just that good. Between them they managed to play my favourite three club songs: Feraude dropped a funky mix of Craig Obey’s Under The Milky Way, Drake pulled out the huge basslines with Bodyrox’s Yeah Yeah and Nugent did an awesome job on building the room up with Eric Prydz’s Proper Education.

If the old classics or upfront house just weren’t doing it for you, or if you were indulging in something a little harder than alcohol, then you would have found everything you were looking for down in the dark depths of the Cave. Yes, the boys from Germany known as Chopstick (Chi-Thien Nguyen) and JohnJon (John Benjamin), were absolutely killing it on the electro/progressive side of things. Although I didn’t recognize a single song, there was never a single moment that I felt bored or tired of listening to these guys. Chopstick and JohnJon were definitely working the crowd with precision: it’s like they knew exactly when we wanted to bust out dancing, when we needed a slow in the pace to recuperate and when the volume needed to be pumped up to get everyone jumping like crazy. I would have to call it a perfect set, as, no one could resist the urge to dance and nobody wanted it to end, with Chopstick and JohnJon certainly proving why they are so popular in Germany.

But their good friend Mark Dynamix, who had been standing by the DJ booth for the whole time, then proceeded to show why Australian DJs are just as good as any other. Kicking off from where they had finished, Dynamix managed to keep the crowd hyped up until the very end of the night, with it ending exactly how it should… with a bunch of people yelling, “One More… One More!” Meaning there was nothing we could do but wait until the next time we could get to the Laundry to start over again and keep the good times rolling.

A huge thanks to Mark Dynamix, Chopstick and JohnJon and Matt Nugent who took me out partying with them until 9am that morning, and an even bigger thanks to Chinese Laundry for providing everyone with such an excellent night.