My last pharmacy, Pharmacy Black, was an outstanding night that left me very content and very tired. The latest offering is Pharmacy – The White Side of Life. The Metro were the hosts for the night and it has become quite grand with the upper levels now renovated and opened up to the general public.

The upper theatre does give the venue an almost IMAX level of immersion when watching from the top level it was an amazing spectacle, especially with the outstanding laser and light show throughout the night. The patrons were quite a colorful bunch, the dedicated Melbourne shufflers in their super fat pants doing there sometimes dominating kicks, spins and other bodily extensions. There was also a noticeable representation of the ‘look good’ girls with their cliche over sized Tees with big print of a whole bunch of pointless quotes. As well as their respective male counter parts with there contrastingly super tight denim and fluro v-cut Tees and equally pointless print and quotes.

Pharmacy Frozen bought me back to the, dare I say, ‘old school’ uplifting trance/hard NRG fusion that originally pulled me into the Hard NRG parties back out at Altona. The night consisted of 3 rooms all starting off playing quite distinct styles of music. The main room had a reliable flow of trance/hardstyle, the ‘interview’ room covered some groovy electro with a few extra BPMs for flavor, the ‘Death from Above’ room was a consistent stream of happy hardcore and hardstyle all through the night. As the night evolved, the sounds of all three rooms meshed together and all met at the hard trance.

Scot Project has been around the traps for a while, longer than I can remember with anthems like overdrive fueling the audiences’ euphoria and dance for years now. Mr Project cranked the well known formula and executed it effectively giving the crowd everything they expected from a Pharmacy night. His set was complimented by fireworks and performers spinning around on a ring at ridiculous speeds, weaving in and out and around it like skilled ninjas.

The night was marred by a handful of unfortunate experiences. Firstly, the venue was hot, literally, too hot at some points of the night. The new laws preventing people from smoking inside definitely alleviated some of the discomfort however. Secondly, the cloak room filled up quite early in the night leaving a lot of patrons carrying there jackets and jumpers around. Thirdly, was the denial of pass outs. At around 3am, it was scheduled that the patrons would be allowed outside for some fresh air and escape the (sometimes overwhelming) sounds and heat, as well as a chance to store there jackets in their cars. However, the patrons were denied pass outs due to some incident that had occurred. I waited around for over an hour, yet no ciggie break so it was back to the dance floor…

To be straight, my night was flat due to the ridiculous heat and being denied a respite from it. It was when I witnessed the performers during Scot Projects set, I realized that this was a mini festival, a celebration, where people who loved the experience, not just the music. It was beautiful to see so many people from such varied sub-cultures all coming together to enjoy a very specific type of music. As soon as I saw the energy people were pulling from the music, the annoyances in the back of my head disappeared for a while and my legs started really moving and pumping to the beats spewing out of the speakers.

It has been well over a year since my last Pharmacy and it had a colorful line up with acts like Leeroy Thornhill from the Prodigy. He bought a distinct sound to the night that I found very refreshing, and there was a part of me hoping the latest pharmacy would have some of it and unfortunately, it was not the case. Overall, the night was ok. It wasn’t bad, it wasn’t outstanding. My own expectations detracted from my personal experience of the night, compounded by the heat and the inability to get pass outs.

In saying that, I can appreciate the work the organizers and DJs have done. It was a familiar formula executed effectively and they delivered a night that most people have come to know and love Pharmacy for.