Soma Corp’s fourth installment in the Local Extracts series was perfectly timed with the celebration of their fourth birthday, and featured Australian techno luminary Patrick HAF, aka The Sentinel. HAF along with many much-loved and respected local Melbourne DJs, performing at one of my favourite venues, Ffour, it was set to be a great night. Over the past 12 years, HAF has supported just about every seminal techno identity on the scene including Juan Atkins, Carl Craig, Derrick May and Claude Young, and as a co-founder of independent label Southern Outpost, he has a reputation that well and truly precedes him.

With this knowledge in mind, and Soma Corp teaming up with Ffour’s Pretty Simple crew, the night was set to be a winner. Unfortunately on this particular occasion, we were not treated to the best example of this series, possibly due to the hideous cold and windy weather that Melbourne was serving up and also to its proximity to New Years and all its madness. A real shame all round.

Local DJs Mike Callander and Ben Cromack started the night well in the main room, with Mike’s interesting set of minimal, tech and house that slowly got us into the groove of the evening, followed by an upbeat let’s-forget-how-freaking-cold-outside-it-is techno set that just rolled on beautifully. By 1am, the crowd that was promised still hadn’t arrived, disappointedly not only for the promoter but for the venue as well, and there wasn’t the usual relaxed friendly music focused group of people as you usually get at Ffour. When Sydney’s Patrick HAF came on, he looked noticeably perplexed by the lack of crowd and this seemed to affect performance throughout his set. The more he tried to keep people on the floor, the more his set became disjointed and seemed to lack consistency and direction. Although the beginning of his set was flooded with classic techno tracks over the past few years, the set didn’t really have a discernible shape to it and didn’t take us on a journey of any kind.

Ben Cromack managed the transition to more up-front techno quite well from Mike Callander’s set and I don’t think that Patrick really capitalised on that. Also the fact that the crowd he was working with wasn’t really big enough or interested enough to go on any sort of journey with him, obviously continued to bother him, making his set seem to take on a ‘hurried’ feel like he was trying to get the big tracks in as soon as possible before people lost interest. As mentioned before, because of this he didn’t have the opportunity to establish any kind of flow.

Having said that, there were brief moments where his obvious skill and understanding of the music shone through. The music was fairly driving with a Detroit style flavour to it, lots of tracks utilising that blend of the TR909 and the DX100. But there was always that impending feeling that the dancefloor was going to clear at any minute and I think he picked up on that.

On this night, he hinted that under the right conditions he’d easily be able to get a crowd moving. A bit of a shame considering this is usually a great local night. I hope that the next Local Extracts in 2008 is a much larger affair that truly gives this series the crowd it deserves. Thanks to Geisha1970 who also helped with this review!