The line-up for the We Love Sounds after-party started out good, then it just got ridiculous. Ellen Allien was enough to have me scrambling for a ticket, then there was M.A.N.D.Y and a live performance from Paul Ritch. But not content to stop there, Finely Tuned slated Seth Troxler for a four hour morning set and all of a sudden we were looking down the barrel of a 9pm-11am night of greatness (and carnage).

I was too late arriving to see Scruffy Goat, who impressed greatly at Subsonic, but by all accounts he slammed it out. And so I arrived to hear M.A.N.D.Y playing delicious, energetic tech, getting a packed Plantation enraptured with layered percussion and arresting bass kicks. Holy crap, this was going to be even better than I thought.

Walking further into the club I was mighty impressed by the sound system – the EAW Avalon Series packs a very satisfying punch and when I walked onto the floor proper and into the system’s sweet spot I melted.

I’ll use that as a poor segue into talking about the heat of the club. The air-con was patchy, the air stuffy, and the smoke machine was used rarely but always needlessly. Although there is a tap for water refills, the bar staff were not exactly making sure glasses were present. In actual fact, the bar was running out of glassware all night, which didn’t help relieve the constantly bulging queue. It’s something that can be hopefully sorted out in time for Robert Motherfucking Hood – which I’m looking forward to even more now I’ve heard that EAW system. A cloakroom wouldn’t be a bad idea too.

These logistical complaints didn’t impact on the night too negatively. The club was comfortably full, and I was overjoyed that it wasn’t the usual bunch of dickheads kicking on from a festival, but a bunch of familiar faces very much there for the music.

M.A.N.D.Y rocked it from start to finish. Sure, there were a few wayward mixes, but the pace of the set was fantastic, upfront percussive tech without getting distracted by excursions into vocal miscellany. The fact that my future wife Ellen Allien was dancing on a podium next to the decks for the entirety of their set also helped.

Ah yes, Ellen Allien. I was hopeful she’d take the lead of M.A.N.D.Y and play a proper peaktime set, which I’ve seen her do a few times (and declared my undying love as a consequence), but having been caning her new artist album Dust this week I had a feeling it was going to be the eclectic Ellen we’d see tonight. The picture became clearer when you looked at the crowd around the decks – a Berliner pantomime with coiffures, mustaches and fake eyelashes, and one Seth Troxler sauntering around offering people swigs from a litre bottle of vodka.

And so eclectic Ellen took to the decks and proceeded to make sure no one cared they weren’t listening to four-on-the-floor tech, with some big moments like Roland Clark exclaiming, “I get deep I get deep I get deep I get deep I get deep I get deep”.

The mixing was rough but the tunes were there, the crowd was loving it, and happy to be led from genre to genre. So I was kind of confused on a couple of fronts when Troxler stepped in to go back to back with Ellen Allien not an hour into her set. Firstly, the DJ booth was heaving with the other acts scheduled to play between Allien and Troxler – it seemed like some impromptu set changes were being made.

Secondly, I was wondering if this was really the right time for Troxler to jump in. I’ll admit it: I’m yet to ‘get’ Seth Troxler. I was out of town for his last visit, but when he was added to the end of an already bumper line-up, I was looking forward to seeing him in his element – the elegantly wasted sunrise slot.

His sound is built around a scene – the excess, the hedonism, the trashing on – as opposed to a scene built around the sound; chinstrokers comparing notes and people jumping around to music that’s more earnest and straightforward. What I’m trying to say is this: the dancefloor was ready to rock, not get locked into the dreamtime state normally reserved for the end of the night.

While a four hour set from the godmother of German techno and the current poster boy for Berlin’s after-hours mayhem sounds like a very interesting proposition, the momentum quickly faltered, and the pair didn’t hold the attention of much of the dancefloor very long. It was a disappointing end to an otherwise great night.

All told, though, I had a great night. There’s so much good music in Sydney at the moment and I’m truly stoked that we get spoilt with line-ups like this (in a club environment). I thought the winter was going to be a long and cold one for techno in Sydney, but with the Finely Tuned guys breathing new life into Plantation – with more than just Bunker, the Church of Techno off to a belting start, even a Kinderspiel on the way, there is no rest for the wicked, or those worn out dancing shoes.