Broken Project pres. Gurluand 2.0 @ Guruland Warehouse, Melbourne (18/7/09)

Even though I’ve been going out to clubs and festivals for a few years now, there seems to be an element of dance music culture that I feel like I missed out on: the underground warehouse rave. People talk about how “the scene” has changed over the years and become more commercialised, with big day parties that’re concerned with being seen and being trendy as much as to do with the music now and have seemingly forgotten their roots. Well one party crew at least is not happy with this state of affairs and is doing their best to bring back some of the old school rave feeling.

Guruland 2.0 was the solution provided by the Broken Project crew on this Saturday night. After walking up the stairs past a lounge area and through into the main room, I was wowed by the effort put in by the organisers. Lights, lasers and visuals were going off and the sound was sublime. Or should that be psyblime? Denham Jay was rocking the decks and having an absolute blast playing to the packed crowd. Superb basslines and melodies had everyone dancing and even though I’ve seen Denham a few times, I hadn’t seen him play so enthusiastically and with so much energy; it was a great set.

Accidental Cyphers was up next and ramped things up a bit straight away. While I don’t really like the Guitar Hero style psy trance and some tracks like Clear Test Signal by Pixel vs Space Cat I find cheesy, the crowd lapped it all up and old favourites such as Life System by Astrix and Switch by Beckers had me grooving away. The extra touches like some live drumming and dancing acts were pretty good too along with free fresh fruit!

Ben Evans followed on and took it a little deeper after the full on madness but it was still all trance and all psychedelic with killer rolling bass lines and loads of acid. February by Solar Fields was a highlight for me along with so many other tunes he played I hadn’t heard before. I had such a great time dancing away I was pretty drained by the time he finished to some well deserved applause from the crowd. He handed over to Loki who ramped it up again but I couldn’t stay for much longer. That was pretty much the only low point of the night, that I had to leave! With awesome tunes, and awesome people at an awesome venue, I can’t wait to do it again!