The road to nostalgia was certainly being trod with Atomic Hooligan coming to The Moonbar. With the bar close to the dancefloor, the sound system spot on and Atomic Hooligan headlining the bill for the evening, there would no doubt be a great night ahead. Atomic Hooligan’s multitude of award wins at Breakspoll over the years have helped in spreading their name, and it only served in carrying the excitement to the many patrons at The Empire on Saturday night.

To set the record straight (so to speak), Atomic Hooligan is a band – when they play live. But when Atomic Hooligan commit to a DJ set it is decks wonder Terry Ryan who picks and drops the tunes. Because most of Hooligan’s latest album is based on live performance not many tunes thrown down for this evening were from the Hooligan’s catalogue. Percussion Junction warmed things up with some fantastic rolling breaks, with the particular highlight of their set a live bongo driven remix of The Plump DJs System Addict. It had the crowd grow after hearing the main synth drop and the lyrics soar.

With the DJ set in mind, Terry rolled down the path of undulating breaks. The highlights of his set were Deekline & Solo’s remix of The Stanton Warriors Get Wild, as well as a tough breaks remix of the must-play-in-every-set tune Mars by Fake Blood. The rest of Terry’s set remained consistent and energetic. Displaying an insane amount of confidence behind the decks, Terry even went as far as to pick up the decks and slam down his own little builds. He also displayed his fantastic ability to scratch and mix very creatively. Whilst his level of self-belief showed, it felt as though something was missing and the crowd remained a little jumpy. Perhaps it was the overdone scratching? Sure, excellent scratching is a plus, but when it becomes a constant rather than a feature it’s a little less amazing. Perhaps it was the track selection?

As Hooligan’s set was coming to a close, the follow up DJs in the background began setting up their gear. As they got their equipment together, something went horribly and unfortunately wrong. Mid track, the audio began to distort to un-listenable levels. Terry’s frustration was evident while the follow-up DJs scrambled around the decks to fix the problem they seemed to have created. In the end, Terry dropped the volume, asked for quiet and walked away from the decks. The crowd continued to make their support known with cheers, claps and wolf whistles, as MC Kitch dropped his own slice of beats with some slick beat boxing. With the problem fixed some ten minutes later, the energy had been regrettably lost forever. Terry returned to the decks and repaired the moment as much as possible with a blast of energy for his closing track; SebastiAn’s take on Killing In The Name. At the very least, this served to inspire a sing-along and lots of jumping around from the crowd. Although the smiles were restored, one can’t help but feel that the audio massacre impacted heavily on the night.

With the promise of breaks on the bill and critically acclaimed spinner Atomic Hooligan to churn out the tunes, all in all it was a good evening. However the audio issue certainly served as a problem, thus taking away from it being the perfect party.