With just over a month to go until the mighty Defqon.1 Festival hits our shores, Nik Fish jetted into Perth to give us a little taste of what may be on offer come that big day in September. Nik is currently touring the country for Q-Dance, promoting the festival and the official Defqon.1 Australia 2010 Festival CD. “The Fish” has been given the honour of mixing one of the CD’s in the 4 CD pack, and has compiled a CD that features all Australian artists.

Opening set for the night was Steven Tranzor playing a solid set. Rise regular, Rousa followed behind the decks, dishing up all kinds of tasty treats to the eager punters. I respect a DJ like Rousa because he has been doing it for a long time and is versatile, although he is more well known for his hardcore. He’s the type of guy that could play just about anything exceptionally well. Tonight, he was playing hardstyle, with a sprinkling of hard dance and hard trance. It kept everyone happy and the set never got boring with Rousa being quite content to mix things up a little. Some of the awesome tunage Rousa played included Derb from the Real Booty Babes, Tricky Tricky 2009 by DJ Sequenza and Brennan Heart’s Van Halen is a Rockstar There was an interesting bootleg/mashup tune that combined Defqon.1 Anthem Colours of the Harder Styles by Showtek with The Prodigy’s Smack My Bitch Up and Flo Rida’s Low. This probably sounds weird – but it worked well.

With some rumours circling that The Fish had been held up, Nik still took to the stage on time. Much to the delight of his faithful fans, he was carrying a bunch of Q-goodies that would be handed out during his three hour set. Nik got down to business. Elektro Shock – the new tune by Toneshifterz – was dropped early and well received by all rocked hard for it. A new remix of Zany’s Pure also went down well, as did Poltergeist by Zatox. Arguably Australia’s best hardstyle DJ, but definitely Australia’s favourite hardstyle DJ, Nik Fish always plays awesome tunes in his sets. Tonight was no different. For me, part of Nik’s appeal – besides his freakishly good mixing ability and ear for excellent tunes – is that he is very down to earth and one of the nicest people you could hope to meet. Nik always takes time after his sets to talk to his fans, and really connect with people in a way that makes you feel like a friend.

The second half of Nik’s set was devoted to mostly all new Aussie hardstyle, including tracks by Soul-T, S Dee and Karpe DM*. After an epic almost 3 hours, The Fish handed over control of the decks to the capable hands of Tekneeqzz, who is fast becoming known as the hardest hardstyler in the west. With the opening vocals of “sit the f@*k down and shut the f@*k up!”, Rawstyle by Zatox set the scene for a very hard set. Other brain pounding tracks in his head smashing set were Deepack’s Phoenix and We Don’t Care, Yellow Minute by Noisecontrollers and Reputation Game by Brennan Heart and Wildstylez. Tekneeqzz looked very comfortable in the booth and delivered a flawless set, proving himself to be a good choice for support to such a high caliber DJ as Nik Fish. Although numbers were down a little from what I was expecting, overall, it was a fantastic night. I’m sure everyone there was glad they went – particularly the two lucky clubbers that got their mitts on the free tickets to Defqon.1