The last few years have been good to dubstep in Melbourne. There have been steadily increasing audiences, regular internationals touring and some great cross-pollination with other styles. Too Much is a new night started by local DJs Same-O and Fooishbar. They kicked things off in fine style on Saturday night, with special guests Seven and Gravious from the UK. It has been a while since I have been to Brown Alley so I was interested to see how the Heartical Hifi PA system would sound in that space. Overall it sounded good but I’m not sure there isn’t some frequencies that are dulled or missing (a little evident in Flippo’s set especially).

I arrived and caught the last 20 minutes or so of Bover Banton who was warming things up for the night. Grabbed a beer and kicked back for the set by Melbourne dubstep producer Flippo. He’s moving to Queensland very soon, so it was his farewell set. He is a master selector and I love that he isn’t afraid of including texture and character in his sets. Think of the sounds of Basic Channel and the rustling, crackling dub techno side of things and you can imagine the sound of a Flippo mix. He started out with some 4/4 and transitioned through some of his own tunes into a track by Jus Wan that really got things moving. By the end of his set he was dropping some great dubstep baselines and the dancefloor was really starting to get going. A good crowd was arriving and everyone looked pretty happy, if a little amazed at the bar prices.

Gravious was up next, playing his set on a laptop with Ableton. Hailing from Scotland, he has releases through the Hotflush Recordings label and is pretty well known amongst the dubstepforum community. His mixtapes have drawn a great following (available from http://www.myspace.com/gravious) and I was pumped to see him live. He played a virtually seamless set, with beautiful dynamics, that really got the crowd moving. One thing that often annoys me about dubstep DJ sets is continual rewinds and, although there may be good track selection, there’s a lack of seamless mixing. I love loosing myself in a good mix and going on a journey. Gravious made this possible and I think you could tell through the crowd response that most people did too.

Local DJ and producer AC23 stepped onto the decks next. As always his track selection and mixing was top notch. Flipping basslines and changing tracks at breakneck speed. With a fair few big tracks he had the crowd worked up nicely by the end of his set.

Then it was time for the man of the night, Seven. As a drum ‘n’ bass producer Eddy Berry has seen great success (under the pseudonym Eddy Woo) and his dubstep tunes have been creating huge waves over the last 8-9 months. Once he stepped up he was straight into it, kicking off with the riddim from his hit tune Siren (out on Tempa). I have heard his mixes and read about what a great technical DJ he is, but seeing him live was just something else. There was a constant energy and flow in his mixing that had the whole room going crazy. Generally I am a fan of a slightly more dynamic approach with DJ sets, but I really enjoyed Seven’s performance. He dropped into some drum ‘n’ bass around two thirds of the way through and it got a wonderful reaction from the crowd – in a way that was his energy step up. Kudos!

What a night! Too Much is now looking for a new home and Flippo is moving to Queensland which is a little bittersweet. But it is great to see dubstep getting such fantastic support in Melbourne. The time flew so much that I didn’t even notice the clock change at 3am – I got back to my car and wondered where an hour had gone!