The punters filed in early to the Villa Nightclub for the venue’s Good Thursday christening by two of dance music’s sharpest tastemakers, Sinden and Fake Blood. The Villa, renovated and re-badged from its former skin of the Heat Nightclub was in mint condition for its debut. Micah looked regal up in the Villa’s raised DJ booth, hovering above corrugated neon visuals and the club’s two tiered dancefloors. The numbers started to swell as the Castro-capped DJ built the pace, shifting gears through some juicy house and breakbeat cutlets. Unfortunately however, Use Somebody by the Kings of Leon doesn’t really scream ‘dancefloor’ at the best of times, and not even a broken beat would seem to improve it. Despite that brief dampener, the momentum continued to build into the home stretch before UK DJ Sinden tagged in behind the decks.

Over the past few years, Sinden has built up an impressive swag of genre-hopping remixes and originals. His distinctive sound of warbling basslines and skittish beats is often thrown into the mix when trying to pinpoint the hard-to-define category of ‘Fidget House’ music. Fellow trend-setters such as Herve, Switch, Boy 8-Bit and that evening’s Fake Blood are also often lumped into this vague pigeonhole, and it doesn’t really do justice to their varied styles and sounds. Hopefully the term will soon be time-capsuled out of circulation. Sinden’s opening drew in the crowd with ever-reliable cuts like Eye of the Tiger, Paper Planes and MSTRKRFT’s Bounce. The reworks of these favourites soon allowed him free-reign to drop a wide splash of tracks from different corners of the dance spectrum. His set was peppered with everything from Brazilian baile funk to UK grime to progressive house to breakbeat, whilst never keeping the youngsters too long from the loving teat that is electro house. It made for an interesting mixture of sounds, and a bumping dancefloor showed the approval for such a fresh mix.

Understandably, the highlight for most in the room was the Fake Blood remix of The Count & Sinden’s phone homage Beeper. Sinden’s take on other anthems such as La Musique, and Township Funk also received much affection from the crowd for rounding out a slick performance. A pulled plug meant that his baton change over to Fake Blood for the next set wasn’t completely seamless, but the nice thing about technical hitches during DJ shows is that they’re usually only brief. Compared with the mood-killing set changes between most rock acts, a bout of silence between DJs is actually pretty palatable, even when unintended. Quickly recovering through a flurry of arms and CD’s between teeth, Fake Blood was in the hot seat, and wasted little time in lifting the standard even further.

Fake Blood’s reputation as a bona fide party-starter has blown up through a mushroom cloud of atom-blasting remixes. His signature touches of vocal cut-ups, 90s-rave breakdowns, and freefall basslines have seen him rise into one of the most in-demand producers and DJs on the scene. Not many could get away with shamelessly dropping their own name through so many tracks – but when the sound is that pumping, the effect is hardly unwelcome. He soon had his set into full swing, traversing through various shades of electro as the packed balconies and dancefloors bounced in appreciation. Surely even the Villa’s nearby residents (who’d successfully campaigned for Heat to be stripped down from a regular nightspot) would have been approved as their fine china jingled along happily to the bubble-bass onslaught.

It wasn’t until the second half of Fake Blood’s set that he let loose with the first of his big remixes. The familiar long intro of Stuck On Repeat was met with room-wide cheers, keen for the crushing bass drop that made it one of his biggest breakthrough tracks. Cheap and Cheerful soon followed, and after a whirlwind through more of the current cream of house music, it was eventually time for the electro-rave synths of his biggest stormer to date, Mars. An extended mix of that track brought a thoroughly danced crowd to cramping point, and Fake Blood’s typically brag-ilicious closer, titled Splashing Blood (Theme from Fake Blood), sent the revelers on their way.

The Villa has obviously done its homework on carving a quality lay-out. In addition to a chic interior, it’s a nice change to be in a club with plenty of different vantage points to view the stage. Some of Perth’s more established venues should be suitably scared if the Villa can continue to match its funky design with top acts that can move a crowd like those showcased tonight. Let’s hope so!