Saturday saw Shape continue into night two of its Australia Day long weekend festivities, welcoming Sydney expat Deepchild into the Habitat room and forward-thinking German electronic artist and Boyz Noize export D.I.M to the Tick Tock room.

Arriving around 12pm, we were greeted by a rather extensive line halted by some form of medical issue in the front courtyard. Security and management must be commended for their handling of the situation and before long the line began to flow quickly. We entered the Tick Tock room around 12:15 to the sounds of Audageous who had already worked up a sizable dancefloor with his indie/electro sounds. He continued to work through a variety of genres, resulting in a set that lack a little in flow. By the time he closed with Ed Solo & School of Thought’s When I Was a Yout, the dancefloor was almost at capacity. Sporting his trusty white towel, D.I.M ripped straight into the distorted sawtooth baselines synonymous with Boyz Noize recordings. Unlike his previous appearance at Shape, D.I.M played a much more controlled and conservative set. He surrounded his own remixes such as Fischerspooner’s Danse en France with overplayed tracks like the Crookers remix of Kid Cudi’s Day n Night and Soulwax’s remix of MGMT’s Kids. D.I.M’s previous shape appearance gave the crowd little time to relax in 90 minutes of hard-hitting gritty electro. This time around his longer 2-hour set yielded much more control and judging by the vibe created the crowd wouldn’t have wanted it any other way.

After and hour or so of electro, it was time to climb the stairs and check out the deeper tech sounds of Deepchild. We arrived mid set to a somewhat half full dancefloor. It has always been a debatable subject whether Perth fully understands techno, and this was made clear by the somewhat flat vibe. Other than the sprinkling of tech heads hanging on each track, the majority of the dancefloor seemed unenthused. This appeared to be based more around Perth’s lack of appreciation of techno, as opposed Deepchild’s flawless mixing and track selection. As expected he worked through a range of deeper tech sounds including Mark Houle’s Techno Vocals and Lutzenkirchen’s 3 Tage Wach.

With the Habitat crew now holding residency upstairs at Shape we can only hope for an increased awareness and appreciation of techno in Perth.