With a stomach bursting at the seams from a massive Easter feast I needed a solid dance on Easter Sunday night, and the Deep As Fu#k Teknival was the obvious place to do it. In fact, there was no excuse needed – this was far and away the best lineup of the Easter weekend, and I’d been salivating about it for weeks.

So too, it seemed, had a lot of Sydney, with a bumper crowd from all corners of the scene drawn by some credible names that haven’t been seen in Sydney before – not to mention a fantastically diverse range of music on offer. On arrival at 10 there was already a bunch of people spread throughout the venue listening to upbeat tech in the main room, proggy stuff in the side lounge, quirky house in the terrace, and psytrance in the Bunker.

That’s some kind of smorgasbord, and one which I enjoyed sampling, flowing from the smooth beats of Robbie Lowe and Tim Culbert to the chugging, melodic, and eminently likeable psy of Fabeta. The Bunker was surprisingly full, an influx of punters from a weekend doof not quite ready to hang up the tie-dyed flares.

Soon enough it was time for Marc Romboy to take over the decks in the main room and by that stage it was rammed. Romboy started off brilliantly, chunky, layered tech with D’Julz’s new remix of the classic Positive Education an early favourite. Those familiar hissy filters went on forever, the fanbois at the front all hands in the air, Romboy working the crowd into a frenzy. On the other side of those big buildups, though, the percussion became more sparse, and I got the wanders.

The Glitch boys are having a fantastic run of late and the tougher, more upbeat sound they’ve thrown down at the last couple of DAF parties has been, well, music to my ears. So in the side room, Dave Choe and Matt Aubusson were killing it.

Past some twisted hip hop in the terrace, down the lift, and into the Bunker where pitched up techno smacked you in the face as soon as the doors opened. The best doofs offer more than just psy and the variety in the Bunker, let alone across the whole party, was a delight. The techno Tom Jaimz was laying was brilliant. Nothing too clever or chinstrokey here, just good party music to jump around to. Berlin’s Daniel Dreier had been snuck into the side room lineup and played an impressive set of throbbing German tech, that should bring a few people to the Bunker for a second taste this weekend at Deep Impressions.

Minilogue was the big draw for me. Their productions have been consistently spectacular in the last few years and even though only one half of the duo, Sebastian Mullaert, was playing, I was still hopeful of a DJ set a cut above. He immediately changed the energy of the main room with a lighter, more percussive contrast to Romboy’s darker fury. Some of the dancefloor took the chance for a breather, but I settled in to hear what was going to happen next. It’s always interesting to see how DJs craft a set when they’re given an extended timeslot, and Mullert definitely covered a lot of ground in his four hours.

At the halfway point he wheeled out Gnarls Barkley – Smiley Faces, a funny moment where the up-for-it dancefloor whooped and hollered, and the chinstrokers raise their eyebrows and mutter, ‘How’s he going to get out of this one?’ They needn’t have worried. Mullaert wasn’t afraid to dip in and out of genres, and it just worked.

Eventually he took us deeper into more ambient territory, wobbly basslines, muted treble, brooding melodies. The stayers on the dancefloor swayed, shimmied, and went with it. And for those that were after something tougher, Dave Stuart and Chris Combe had plenty of people in the side room cheering and jumping with their big tech builds and lots of heavy four four kick drums.

With a big crowd in attendance, the Easter Teknival was an undeniable success for the Deep As Fu*k boys, and one which they richly deserve. Not only did they pull together an exciting and fresh lineup of internationals, they trucked in a shitload of extra speakers which really made The Cross come to life (albeit with an annoying bleed from main room to side lounge). Promoters that don’t cut corners – you’ve gotta love that.

But for me, the best part of the DAF parties is the crowd. Other brands have carved out a niche in the scene and suffer for it – their punters are too pretentious, too young, too aggressive, too druggy, too fluro, whatever. DAF has been able to get a good variety of people from a variety of scenes, and that’s some feat. Their regular punters up for it, they’re open-minded, and they’re being rewarded with some of the best nights out in Sydney at the moment.