Ricky Ryan is a one-man band. From playing guitar, drums and jazz vocals he seems to have it all covered, including production. His enthusiasm for acquiring instrumental talents has spread across to this production side, where in a small number of years he has risen towards the top of the progressive genre with a multitude of original tracks, remixes and even his own label. Not bad for 23 years old.

Ryan’s background in contemporary music really shone through in his DJ set last Friday night, when he headlined regular progressive house night Habit, interlacing and weaving delicious guitar licks and funk rhythms like a composer. Although, based on the music flowing around the room I would liken him more to James Brown, summoning mysterious horn solos with the flick of a wrist.

With the experience of a master, Ryan crafted a set consisting of solid percussive tunes and lush, melodic progressive. Hi-hats rose and fell, flaring up like a burlesque dancer’s legs during Carnivale, shakers and woodblocks echoing past the speaker stacks and straight onto the dance floor. But about halfway through his set he seemed to lose heart in the waning crowd, which by about 2.30am seemed to be at half capacity and half pace.

Meanwhile, the weird little side room at Candy’s was chugging along to the tunes of Foundation, who deserves special mention for his heavy prog set so early into the night. Back to the main room, and Ryan slowed the pace of his set down to a halt, dropping the immensely huge Goodbye Pluto, the bass line ringing right throughout the second half of his set. He launched into a French-electro vocoder-themed track before concentrating on the infectious rhythms that accented the first half of his set.

The recurring underlying sound that Ricky Ryan presented to the audience was traditional progressive, by which I mean the definitive rhythms were punctuated by steady percussive build-ups. Every now and then he’d have the foresight to pander to the mixed crowd gathered at Habit and provide roaring bass heavy tracks bearing similarities to No More Conversations and the like, but with a more dynamic range in the notes, adding to the overall ‘funky’ elements which interlaced the set.

His transitions between tracks were obvious but smooth as his musical background was implemented into his technical mixing abilities, but he never strayed from the funky rhythm underlying his track selection. Ordinarily the word funky makes me cringe; but Ryan’s ability to implement this energy into the dance floor was incredible. His DJ set was wildly different to what I expected, and although I was expecting a smooth summery percussive groove on a yacht surrounded by bronzed models drinking Evian, I wasn’t even close. But I did enjoy myself.

By the time that Ricky Ryan was ending his set, Matt Rowan and Jaytech were about to start and all the while, Chris Rawlins was mixing up a storm in the backroom to a small but dedicated group of followers. I peeked in a couple of times and it was all hands in the air.

Unless there is a special event planned I don’t usually have time for Candy’s Apartment, I don’t really like the type of crowd it attracts at around 4am. But congratulations must be made to Habit for sticking it out in honour and continually selecting such a high calibre of local and international guests.