Welcome to Techno Town, where the beats are tough and the crowd is even tougher. Venturing out on another chilly Melbourne night, I first stopped off at the Hungry Jacks on the corner of Swanston and La Trobe to fuel up on some energy for the evening. As I sat and ate my spicy chicken baguette and munched on some tasty warm onion rings I looked across to RMIT’s Storey Hall, which sticks into my mind (other than its architecture) for some of Melbourne techno history’s finest moments where WET Musik launched their Live @ series and set the benchmark for parties for years to come.

As Techno Town was to be a more intimate affair I certainly was not expecting anything on as grand a scale as the old WET parties, in fact if you were following the goss on ITM , you’d be aware that this was to be a techno party for techno’s sake. Good ol’ fashioned tough to hard, predominantly loopy T.E.C.H.N.O, and I would have expected nothing less. So with minimal promotion and fuss, such was the setup and decor. Now for those that have not journeyed to the Bunker the name is as it suggests, a bunker. Concrete walls surround you like a cold war missile silo, with a seedy bar lounge area reminiscent of an early to mid 80’s porn/American B-grade action flick set, which strangely set the perfect mood.

I thought it best to arrive a little early so I didn’t miss any of the action and to be able to give a full report if I was to write this review. Standing outside I could hear the throb of techno kicks pounding away, so I wandered down the stair case which then opens up to the dance floor. Looking around as it was early the numbers were a little scarce with a few people hiding in the comfy back lounge, I proceeded to the bar and grabbed a drink and was pleasantly surprised to see some change returned from a $10’er. Scanning around I was looking for the DJ booth, being my first time at the Bunker Lounge I was not familiar with the lay out and to my surprise when I finally got lock on the actual booth’s location there was no driver at the wheel so to speak (this I was to find out later due to an incident that caused Ranjit to be locked out of his apartment minus his tunes). Not to fear though as the party got started about 15 minutes later than scheduled which only added to the excitement.

As Ranjit fired up the decks, out burst some rumbling electro-tinged acidic groves with big fat bass drums and adding that signature trademark Technoir twist. The crowd had grown since I’d last checked and every body was finding their own groove with smiles on their dials. Just as it seemed Ranjit had started, head honcho for this little shin dig Naked Age took the helm and treated us to journey through all varieties of banging tech, with ravey sythn stabs giving way to hard stripped back acid mixed in with classics like Thomas Schumacher’s When I Rock and lots of long lost gems. Proceeding on from here was non other than Mr MTC, Sam McEwin, and while still recovering from MTC’s 6th birthday bash the evening before, by no means did this have an effect on his performance. In fact it was the most slammin’ I have heard Sam bust out in a long time, dropping both the Speed J and Adam Beyer remixes of CLR Re-Entry. I believe I heard Speedy J’s classic Pannik some where in there as well all blended together with some less obvious but still hard-as tuneage.

To close the evening was Ian other wise known as Photon. For a lot of tech heads his name maybe not be that familiar as he mostly moonlights as a hard trance DJ, but for tonight he had switched back to the real stuff. Although he may have been billed as playing a set of schranz, it was more along the lines of rock-solid techno, opening with the Max Walder remix of Cave’s Carnival and throwing in the likes of the original version of When I Rock, mixed amongst the remix off One Night In Hackney to name but a few, while managing to steer away from the crunchy distorted cheesy bootleg variety of schranz.

Winding up a bit after 2am, it made for quite an enjoyable and early night, so if you miss hearing your old tough stuff or want to try something thing new, I recommend you keep and eye and an ear open for the next event (just don’t go under false pretenses) as previously stated this is techno for, techno’s sake and if you get that philosophy then you will definitely get Techno Town.