While my new year’s eve may not have been as Sensational as some of my friend’s, and my new year’s summer day was spent with family, I still had a chance to get my groove on before the celebrations came to a close. I was particularly looking forward to the Summadayze Afterparty at QBH since Ferry Corsten was hanging around for another set and as I hadn’t seen him before, it was a good chance to get in before the ferry sailed on. Now that’s a couple of pretty bad jokes in just the first paragraph, have I used all my ammunition already? Read on to find out!

Since this is Melbourne, the weather was up to it’s usual tricks and it was freezing cold outside when I arrived. I took one look at the line and decided to try my Jedi mind tricks on the security. One weak minded guard later and I was on the inside, where a pretty decent sized crowd was rocking away to Jewelz. I only know her from her reputation as a hard trance DJ, but she was doing a pretty good job of playing to her time slot and tracks like Full Tiltin’ by Timmy & Tommy had the crowd going.

When Tydi took over, the crowd had swelled a bit more and was filling up the venue. I was actually a bit unsure how it would go numbers wise, but we Melbourne peeps party hard and along with the people who had been going all previous night/day there were a few for whom this was their only big party of the new year’s celebrations, so it was good to see a big crowd going off at this time, despite the multitude of events on and the ongoing crusade by everyone’s favourite tabloid to ban rave parties.

My chinstroking DJ friends who weren’t chinstroking quickly gave their approval to Tydi, who was going off behind the decks. Chakalaka by Wippenberg and Off The World by Martin Roth & Alex Bartlett had the crowd going nuts. Even the security was dancing away and busting out moves. If anything Tydi was going off too much, as much as we all love a DJ getting into it, the Jesus pose meter could probably have been turned down a notch. Or seven. We were still having fun though, and it was about to get better. With a huge cheer as soon as he stepped out onto the stage, it was pretty clear everyone was looking forward to Mr Corsten. Major tuneage occurred instantly, and the visuals took us on a trip through the universe.

It was great pumping trance all the way through, the crowd was loving it, especially the Jonas Stenberg remix of Monkey Forest. It was my turn to chinstroke when Ferry played this, as I think it is one of the most useless remixes of an old tune ever, but I couldn’t convince my friends. Apart from that slight setback it was a really great set, probably the best uplifting trance set I’ve heard in a long time. There were some older tunes mixed in the new, some vocals to sing along and then when you think it can’t get any better, it was full steam ahead at the end with Shanti, my personal favourite off the new album, Punk, which the whole place sung along too, Brain Box and topped it off with Radio Crash. Brilliant.

After the Ferry show Daniel Kandi had the tough act of keeping us going. While the crowd thinned noticeably after Corsten, it didn’t bother him and he laid on the sweet stuff opening with a Coldplay remix. It was pretty banging right off the bat and remaining crowd lapped it up, with classics like For An Angel proving to be a great dessert after the Ferry main course. It turned a bit sour after that for me personally with Above & Beyond’s cheddary Alone Tonight, and the tiredness hit in so it was time to leave. This meant I missed out on a versus set between Kandi and Steve Strangis which I’m sure would have been great. I left thoroughly satisfied though, as did many punters and it was a great way to cap off the new year’s partying, and to kick off 2009.