Aaaaahhhhh progressive house… how I love thee…let me count the ways: 1) the beautiful, complexly layered sounds. 2) the warm, enveloping bass. 3) The down-to-earth DJs with real names. The list goes on and on. And I’m not talking about just any progressive house. This is progressive house of the highest order. This is the progressive house of Hernan Cattaneo, who’s been at it for well over a decade, and can easily stand shoulder to shoulder with the dons of electronic music, be it Sasha, Digweed, Oakenfold or whoever else.

On Friday night at Brown Alley, Hernan Cattaneo gave Melbourne an education in quality dance music, one that this punter will remember for a loooooong time. Like all quality progressive sets, this one went the distance, with Hernan hitting the decks for four hours, bringing wave after wave of ever increasing intensity and energy. From the moment he took the reigns, he had the packed to capacity Brown Alley crowd eating from the palm of his hand. Dropping gems such as Nic Fanciulli and Steve Mac’s 10% and Danny Howells’ Moonage Dream, layering Thom Yorke’s ethereal voice over pumping drums, his set was a thing of true beauty.

His build-ups took the crowd to the edge of oblivion – they were long and drawn, but always delivering the knockout punch at the perfect time, shattering the dance floor with earth moving drums beats. Each track built on the one before, delivering layer upon layer of beautiful and complexly orchestrated dance floor mayhem. The maestro was in the finest of forms, and the crowd lapped up every last boom, blip and tweet.

As Cattaneo was well into his set, Loco Dice kicked off his set upstairs around 4am. I ran upstairs to catch him, but as much as I’d like to say I stayed to sample the goods, after a perfunctory visit I scooted back to Hernan. The gravitational pull of the Cattaneo galaxy was just too strong; once you get stuck in his orbit, good bloody luck getting yourself out. Happily, after Cattaneo took his rapturous applause and departed stage left, Loco Dice continued on and gave those that stayed (which to be honest, seemed like every single person in the place) a deep, groovy set of full of techy beats and chunky grooves. Being a Loco Dice virgin, I was as taken by the crowd’s devotion to him (there seemed to be as many people there to see him as there were for Hernan), as I was by what I can only describe as the smooth chunkiness of his beats.

Loco Dice was the ying to Cattaneo’s yang, as smooth as Hernan’s was layered, as funked up and Hernan’s was driving, and, in all a surprisingly pleasing way to close out one of the finest nights in memory.