The last time some thumping prog tech dazzled a full house at Tank it was a Future Music sideshow with the legendary John Digweed and Way Out West. Half a year later and at the opposite end of the summer festival season, it was time to head back to Tank for four hours of power from Layo & Bushwacka.

It was a rainy night after a muddy Parklife, the Sunday of a long weekend that had already featured tech options including Deetron. Walking into the club as L&B kicked off, two things immediately got your attention. It was bloody hot. The heat smacked you in the face. But also, the music was rather good. Pumping, peaktime party tech.

The crowd was large and pushy, a mix of punters without the detritus you might expect from Parklife. Instead, it was the kick-on experts ‘fresh’ from Church of Techno that were well-represented. The party was definitely a solid option for the kick-on’s kick-on, and the loopy, chuggy tech was just what punters at the messy end of a marathon were after.

The Church boys had brought air horns that they weren’t afraid to use. But unlike the vuvuzela at the World Cup, the horns somewhat complemented the music – the big room sound, cavernous club, and appreciative crowd combining for a, dare I say it, Balearic vibe. There were even a couple of podium-hungry dancing girls just in case you thought you were at an underground event, or wished you were at Space.

There were big tunes, like Rej, that were perfect for the long weekend crowd. But any straying from accessible four on the floor was quickly corrected. Sax house and stripped back minimal weren’t well-received and an irrelevant MC and overused white noise build-up got the crowd back on track.

The chinstrokers retreated upstairs to get a bit of funk in their diet thanks to Claire Morgan and the CO-OP and Monkey Tennis DJs, but they were in the minority. L&B were repetitive, unadventurous, slamming…and did the job. They played to the crowd and the crowd loved them.

For many, though, the lasting memory of the night will be the heat and the crush. Tank is a beautiful venue, but like all other beautiful venues the world over, it’s a horrible place to be when it’s too full. To be fair, there’s some talk on the forum that the air-con actually broke, and to Tank’s credit free jugs of water were well-stocked all night.

But regardless, Tank is a mission to move around in when it’s busy. It was a bright spark for a while in the Sydney scene before it fell victim to RnB nights – will Tank ever get the attention it once had?