Amongst the late inclusion of a couple of logistical issues surrounding the night, what it really meant for the punters of Sydney is that the real magic was a little longer in waiting time for people who came to experience Liberate in the main room of The Arthouse hotel. A last minute venue change from the Manning Bar to the Arthouse hotel personally allowed me and many of the other trance-enthused punters a first hand view of a trance event at this inner city venue, usually reserved for other genre specific club nights.

Falling down the rabbit hole (walking through the front door of The Arthouse hotel) it was a pleasant surprise to be opening up my ear drums to the delight of hearing Solarstone delivering track after track of heavenly melodic trance played out to a reasonably filled room. My long time absence from these events was suddenly wiped by the uncontrollable urge to participate in the hands in the air motion and with my music tastes recharged and reconfigured to take on the sweet melodies I was also ready for some explosive bass action which trance tracks lure themselves too. One of the main highlights was hearing Solarstone – Seven Cities being played out by some of the long time masters of the genre, Solarstone themselves. I honestly felt was worth the experience itself. Even the popular long standing vocal tracks which Solarstone played received great recognition from the punters alike. A great fan of their tracks for numerous years, the feeling of appreciation that I’d been able to finally see these guys do what they do best and take the punters on a well defined journey. To say the least, their entire set was well received by all.

Eddie Halliwell then stepped up onto the podium to deliver what would be yet another really anticipated, high, octane set. Some people were honestly scared that a little eruption across the other side of the world would deny Eddie from making his anticipated return to Sydney this night. But the rest assurance of seeing him on stage meant that all systems were ready and it was time to fire up the coals of some really hard hitting energetic tech-trance. One thing I can truly say with great confidence is when Australia became the new British colony down under we definitely left the blood lines of people with real talent back in England. Mr Halliwell (or Eddie to his adoring fans) is a real showman, a real enthusiast, nothing ever short of a true entertainer. In the multitude of trance events that I’ve attended over the years, Eddie never seems to deliver less than a some what satisfying set. On this night the man could do no wrong. The crowd riding in the palm of his hand through all the highs, mids and lows that he seemed to keep manipulating from one track to another. With the insistent “Eddie” chant whenever he pressed the cue button or practise his very competent extra-dimensional track altering skills, lead to the ever-building atmosphere only gathering pace especially while he was playing down tracks from Sander Van Doorn and other tech-trance masters -coupled with current mainstream tracks and samples including cross over remixes of Kings of Leon and Red Hot Chilli Peppers. This meant that Eddie was in turn really also doing a great job masking the evident in-house sound issues throughout his entire set. All this while the event headed into the early part of the morning. With some over zealous MC’ing, some extra added hype all happening over the top of some great rolling tech trance to finish, Eddie left the crowd to ponder when the next time it would be that Eddie would be back in the country.

It was then that it felt that the event had already hit the climax of the night. But as the crowd slowly thinned, Matt Hardwick still had the difficult task of ensuring that the energy could still remain throughout the main room of the Arthouse. From the bass-enriched tech trance tracks from Eddie’s reservoir, Hardwick moved more towards harder, edgier electro infused trance, dropping in vocal trance tracks including Dogzilla – Without You along the way as he felt needed.

Signum lifted back up the tempo a little to finish off the night, infusing layers of driving tech-trance tracks. But by that time, only the true die hard fans were still apparent in the room as he headed towards the end of the night playing What you got for me. This ended being one of the tracks signaling the end to a rare musically-enriching night of trance in Sydney.