Ahhh the open sea: where fresh air fills your nostrils, tranquility eases your mind, a sea breeze lightly brushes your face… and loud music and lots of booze keep you entertained for hours. After its last hurrah as a club night the week before, Bread & Butter was saying its official goodbyes aboard the Lady Rose on Good Friday, taking Sydney’s fans of quality underground house on a six-hour ride around the harbour to a soundtrack provided by the international guest Joris Voorn, and various locals who have all featured at Bread & Butter over the last year and-a-bit.

Synik was busy warming up the sound system as the loyal partygoers who braved the questionable weather and choppy waters piled on to the boat, and he was doing a solid job of keeping people inside despite the urge to go enjoy the last hour or so sunlight left in the day. Keeping it light, stripped back and funky, Synik’s set was a wobbly excursion through the less serious side of house music, featuring plenty of funky basslines, punchy percussion and tight grooves, with the excellent Funkworm by Stimming being the highlight of the set.

Next up relative newcomer to the scene Daniel Lupica took things deeper, weaving together a fantastic collection of deep, warm tech house and techno cuts with expert precision. Dennis Ferrer’s A Black Man In Space was an early highlight in the set, which slowly built up from deep, head-swimming tech house to punchy, melodic techno grooves in an absolutely flawless fashion. Lupica’s mixing was also inspiring, with the young gun blending tracks for two and three minutes at a time and creating an immersive groove that locked on to the crowd’s hips and never let go.

Bread & Butter promoters John Devecchis and Garry Todd then got their moment in the sun (or lack thereof), laying down a sweet mix of techy grooves, bouncy house and anything else that can get a party started. The excellent Manipulation by Johnny D sticks out, as per usual the mixing was as tight as I’ve come to expect from these two. Raf of Deep As Fuck fame was given official Joris Voorn ‘warm-up’ duties, playing the final set before the international guest stepped up to the decks. Raf laid down a tight set of all things tech-oriented, from crunchy, bassline driven electro-tech to deep percussive techno, with a few chunks of ghetto shiz thrown in for good measure (including the aptly titled Ghetto Train by Justin Martin).

And then at 9PM, Joris Voorn made his long overdue debut appearance behind a set of decks in Sydney. And although he’s not playing the stomping, in-your-face techno he used to, Voorn’s sound is still aimed squarely at the dancefloor; it just takes a detour via the mind on its way. And it was in the spirit of this mind-floor composite music that Voorn took the crowd on a three hour trip through just about every form of deep four-to-the-floor music there is out there. There were splashes of deep house such as Afrilounge’s Lux Dementia and Walkman by Johnny D, elements of melodic techno (think Chymera’s lush Umbrella and the positively massive Berghain by Aril Brikha for example), some old-school ravey sounds such as Lets Go Juno by Rejected, bits and pieces of minimal, and a liberal dose of classics including Wink’s Higher State Of Consciousness and a remix of Mushrooms by Marshall Jefferson, both of which came so far out of leftfield I wasn’t sure whether to dance or just applaud Voorn’s ingenuity.

And despite playing such a diverse range of music across his three hours, the crowd stuck with Voorn and followed his every deviation, detour and tangent, eagerly awaiting where he’d take them next. It can be quite difficult to weave together such a wide variety of music into a cohesive whole, and even though personally I felt there were times where the music took perhaps too much of a sudden turn, Voorn largely managed to successfully bring together a very large spectrum of music and make it work. His technical skills were also worthy of a mention, with Joris doing plenty of long, interesting blends between tracks as well as using pre-made loops and effects to create interesting transitions between tracks.

And then, it was all over. The lights came on, the boat stopped rocking (but for some reason my legs chose to keep swaying from side to side), the music ended, people chanted for one more, and when it sadly didn’t come filed off quietly, knowing this was the last time an event would be run with the Bread & Butter name attached to it. Bon voyage guys.