With some of my favourite locals on at the first Substance night for 2009, I couldn’t miss the opportunity to check out this crew. While walking up Highlander lane to get to the venue I was treated to a feast for my eyes and ears: a couple of guys pissing against the wall while Living On A Prayer was being belted out by a nearby pub. Class. With a beginning like that, I knew I was in for a good night.

Denham Jay was smashing it out when I got in and had me boogieing right from the start. It was a nice soundtrack while I waited at the bar for my drink and checked out the venue. It was nicely setup with some booths and lounges to relax in and seemed to have more of a bar vibe than a night clubbing with pumping progressive psytrance coming out of the speakers.

When Mish’chief took over after Denham, the good tunes continued and I really liked one track in particular by James Harcourt. I busted out my twist and shake moves ala the guy in the Solo Strong midget ad but despite her best efforts I was pulled away by something occurring upstairs. A friend said there were pub anthems being played and I had to investigate. I walked into the room to hear Just Like A Prayer by Madonna combined with Thriller by Michael Jackson and some nice beats. What the?

This was Mouka playing live mashups with the laptop and midi controller and it was the highlight of the night for me. It was just so fun and crazy I had to split my time between dancing and laughing. Other incomprehensible highlights were the riff from Enter Sandman combined with the lyrics from It’s Tricky and Eye Of The Tiger with lyrics from Midnight Oil. It was really enjoyable and the crowd dancing and running amok with an inflatable mobile phone of all things enjoyed it as much as I did.

When he finished up it was time for some drum n’ bass courtesy of J-Slyde and Algorithm. While I generally enjoyed the tunes they played I was feeling a bit unco and headed back downstairs to the relatively safer 4/4 beats from Taran M and Simon Murphy. While most people were content to lounge around the dance floor area filled up a bit with tracks like What The Fuck by Funkagenda but then not too much later it was back to lounging. This just made it seem to me like there was a bit of vibe or atmosphere lacking but maybe the relatively small dance space can take some blame, as there were a few people rocking out for most of the night.

Even though it wasn’t too late I was feeling a bit tired but tried to hold on for Ben Evans and I was rewarded with some great trance, the perfect pick me up. Tracks by Ace Ventura among others filled me with some more energy and it also filled up the tank of some guy break dancing, so much so he proceeded to crash into me while attempting to wow everyone with his skillz. I really enjoyed Ben’s set and his tunes were so good, members of the local constabulary had to come in and bring the night to a close, lest we all become overexposed to awesome. We left happy though as it was a good night, all the DJs played good tunes and I enjoyed my first Substance experience.