The Godskitchen clubbing juggernaut has been and gone for another year with a change of venue for Brisbane and an unfortunate drug bust in Melbourne being the only bad news it leaves it it’s wake. GK (Godskitchen) for the past three years been held at The Family to good reports, but to quote DJ M.I.K.E’s track “Changes R Good” and The Met delivered. Of course it was a bit of a coup for the GK promoters to choose The Family’s most direct rival in Brisbane club land, but considering the scope of the event and the high exposure of the artists they tour it shouldn’t have been a surprise.

Thankfully a change of venue didn’t also mean a vast change to the music policy, Trance main room as per normal with the standard House side room which has been part of the last two GK events to pass through Brisbane. Word of warning: this reviewer is a less than closet trance head so if you’re an Alex Gaudino or Bodyrox fan, don’t be too offended to not read anything of them on this page. Then again you may have been drawn to the dark side in which case; read on . . . .

Off to a good start in the hallowed smoke and laser filled cavern that is The Met main room/dance hall were The Thrillseekers, who curiously enough were playing a relatively low tempo variety of progressive trance which suited the mood well and more than ably filled the dance floor. Appropriately enough, whoever was operating the lighting rig seemed to be going for some kind of upper himalayas feel with enough fog to fuel a temporary weather system. Jokes aside, it did have to be done for the lasers which were hanging from the lip of the mezzanine level which is reasonably high, no pun intended. With Ferry Corsten’s Beautiful and Sander Van Doorn’s monster tune Riff doing the damage courtesy of The Thrillseekers, laser reaching was compulsory.

Not to be outdone though, Belgian super producer M.I.K.E brought just as many guises to the decks as he previously has to the record labels. The change in M.I.K.E’s sound has been a very gradual one but has curiously neither abandoned all the elements of the Trance he used to more regularly play nor at all alienated his traditional audience which seemed to lap up every last bit of his Tech-Progressive hybridised sound. With a diverse and dirty mixing style which was admittedly at times a little hit and miss, he nonetheless managed to build the dance hall to fever pitch and leave barely a patch of open floor. Those that were missing Stephan Bodzin to be at GK would have been over joyed to hear M.I.K.E play Papillon; those who were indifferent got more than a fair share of the slightly less obscure though with the Deadmau5 remix of No Pressure, Terry Ferminal’s Deep Inside and most dramatically the Greg Downey remix of Bedrock’s classic Heaven Scent. But for all the great tunes he really ought not to touch the microphone mid set to introduce himself. Though the charisma is welcome, screwing with the groove isn’t. Quibble aside M.I.K.E played an awesome set and more than met expectation which a whole lot of sweaty, beaming faces proved better than words alone.

The real show stealer’s for the night though were Rank 1 (Oh the irony). Whilst it’s true they weren’t technical geniuses behind the decks and they were fairly predictable at times, they played proper big room trance both new and old which is what Godskitchen is all about: the euphoric. The Rank 1 boys seem big fans of Cosmic Gate as they played both the club mix of Body of Conflict and their own Rank 1 Digital Rehash of Analog Feel. Part of the whistle stop trance tour was of course to play Cafe Del Mar, but unlike most Trance DJs, they played the underrated Three n’ one remix which usually gets overlooked in favour of the Marco V Remix. Not stopping there, Out of the Blue got dusted off for dozenth nostalgic time and consistent crowd pleaser Walk Down by Kyau & Albert both played puppeteer with the crowd. The ultimate destroyer however was Rank 1’s closer, Mojado’s Kaktus from their recent limited edition 10” vinyl series that Tiesto has been flogging the bejesus out of on his Elements of Life tour. With that end the only downside to Rank 1’s set was that it was over far too soon!

Richard Durand was left to close The Met dance hall and though he managed to keep a few dancing until the lights went up he turned out to be something of a disappointment. For an artist capable of producing tracks as good as the Scream Mix of Slipping Away, Sunhump and Sweep & Repeat it’s a terrible shame he feels compelled to play from Rave DJing 101. It wasn’t that Durand was unskilled, he was more than capable in the mixer destroying department, but Red Hot Chilli Peppers didn’t belong in a Trance set, nor did the Beastie Boys Intergalactic. To compound this he thought it a good idea to play both Smack My Bitch Up and Born Slippy each for the billionth time and to make things worse did little more than chuck in short samples of both which was simply tacky. Play the bloody thing through! We know you can mix! The track selection wasn’t all terrible, he did play Pulverturm which is always a good giggle and also the banging Marcel Woods remix of Adagio for Strings, but neither mean much when isolated from a worthwhile continuum. Seeing Richard Durand play was more like being time warped back to 2001 and seeing Thief play at System 6, which was slightly dodgy back then even. Like a childhood cartoon remade for film, somethings ought not to be seen let alone thought of much.

So that’s that! The crowd was hands down one of the best for sometime; bad attitudes were checked in at the door, the Barbie and Ken paradigm was for the most part conspicuously absent and gurns were at there most amusing. Only one thing seemed odd about a mostly misty eyed evening . . . . not enough phat pants!