Decisions decisions! What to choose for Easter Saturday Night?

A: Sit quietly at home and wait for some dude who is riding around the whole earth in one night nailed to a giant bunny and delivering chocolate eggs. Or….

B: Dance your buns off at an Easter Masquerade Ball billed by the Renaissance and Global Underground labels, and presided over by two of the greatest progressive DJs this world or any other has ever known.

Take into account that the bunny dude won’t deliver to the naughty kids. But Satoshi Tomiie and Nick Warren most likely will. Cue the thinking music… Yep, that’s exactly what I thought too. And so let the Easter progressive magic begin!

Another out-of-the-box Laundry party started quite early on the Garden Terrace with sets from Sydney mix-vixen Trinity and Laundry resident Matttt, with a special ‘intimate’ set from Satoshi Tomiie. I’m gutted that my day job kept me constrained until the sun had fully set, but I sent minions to check out the some of the Garden action, and all reported that Satoshi was ‘awesome’ and ‘unbelievable’ and ‘fantastic’ and played the ‘absolutely perfect set for the terrace’. So there.

I was gunning to check out sets early in the night. Matt Rowan and Club Junque in particular have pulled out some awesome melodic stuff lately. Nice. But I was cursed for blaspheming the ‘nailed-to-the-bunny’ dude. Catastrophic day job fail, followed immediately by catastrophic public transport fail saw me galloping down to the Slip Inn not long before midnight with Tomiie and Warren (allegedly) both kicking off at the same time. If ever there was a need to spontaneously develop multiple-personality disorder or grow a second head, this was it! Having so many delicious memories wrapped in Warren’s sweet melodic sets and mixes, I chose the devil I know.

In the main room every living creature within a 12 mile radius was raring for Warren to rip the roof off. And our man got right to it! The pace was up right from the start. He decided to forgo the sweet melodic pretties and slam straight into a pounding barrage of techno. And didn’t we love it hard! I’m putting it down to coch fatigue after working all day, (that’s ‘cochlear’, it means EARS) but I couldn’t hear much melodic going on, plenty of driving bassline though. There were little sparkles of beauty amidst the beats too, so I’m going with ‘driving wicked progressive goodness’.

Cracking party vibe in the crowd too. Props to the lady in the black feather-mask, to Zorro and to Hannibal Lecter. He was one scary LOL! Check out the cool Masquerade action in the gallery here. You didn’t know if the pulsating body next to you was trying to get past, dance, or feel you up. Ahhhh, good times!

The crowd in that main room was a lot different to the usual main room fare. More old-schoolers out to pay homage to a master. Maybe that’s why the atmosphere was still fun and not threatening, despite the jamming. A suspicion was roused as I spotted quite a few checking phones to see how much Arsenal and Man Utd were smashing it by. Yep, many were Brits here at Laundry for the first time, or the first time in ages, just to see the progressive god from Bristol do his thang. Our Brit chums are well used to the crush on the Tube, so they definitely would have focused on the awesome tunes and not gone home disappointed!

At 1am I forfeited my hard won position and headed across to the Cave to check out Satoshi Tomiie. A sizeable crowd in here too, hands in the air to some slower but harder beats. I wormed my way towards the front, with glimpses of the DJ booth between nodding heads and flying hands. Wow, Satoshi has bleached his hair completely blonde. And wow, doesn’t he look a LOT like Mark Dynamix! Ohhh noos! Catastrophic Set-time Fail! I had totally missed ST. Not Funny! My minions had caught the whole set tho. I can’t say how much he played from his new Renaissance Master Series release, but according to minions Satoshi was ‘awesome’ and ‘unbelievable’ and ‘fantastic’ and played the ‘absolutely perfect set for the Cave’. I’m totally paying them too much.

MDX (AKA Mark Dynamix) kept with the driving but quickly notched up the pace. I’m sure he was stoked to have extra hours to play with and he went out hard. Another wicked decision. To stay with the MDX who was playing some awesome stuff, or to return to the Nick Warren den of debauchery. Coin toss. Warren wins.

In Warren’s 3rd hour he gradually built in more melody. And we responded as if he’d played 2 hours of his own warm-up set. As the hands reached higher and higher, I’m sure I heard tracks from his new release Global Underground Lima. Victoria R’s Beauty Goes Blind and Thomas Sagstad’s Castillan. The Master Stroke was when he dropped the Joris Voorn Magnolia Mix of Robert Babicz’s Dark Flower and the whole place started to pulse-levitate. Oh sweet chocolaty dude out riding the Easter Bunny, you got nuthin!!

All was still packed at 4am when Warren dropped his last sweet track, one final melting blast of the melodic sweetness he is so revered for. And over the calls for ‘one more’, twisted beats hammered through the walls from the Cave as MDX brought it home. Some extremely happy punters stumbled out into the Easter Sunday dawn, already plotting raids on the good kids’ chocolate stash. Ah, the inspiration of sweet music. You HAVE to give it to Laundry for consistently delivering absolutely First Rate DJs every time. Too packed for some? That’s definitely a valid point that could do with some proper discussion. But I also say, learn to share friend. You too could be felt up in the middle of some of the sweetest sets you will ever hear. Happy Easter Bunnies! Let’s do this again next week.