Perth drum & bass fans were spoiled rotten with the number of gigs in the week after New Year’s Eve, in fact there was another gig with internationals headlining on the same night as Netsky was playing at Villa. However that hadn’t dampened anyone’s appetite for more great tunes; the ‘sold out’ sign was up when I arrived at the venue at 11pm and there were some disappointed festivalgoers loitering outside in the hopes of scoring a ticket.

The venue wasn’t packed out at this early stage of the evening and Muller was playing a great warm up set, with some dubstep tracks and also some liquid drum & bass. I thought he started out quite deep but the vibe got harder as the set progressed and the club filled up. Personal highlights were Chase & Status’ Music Club and a very dubby version of Rusko’s Hold On (which I think was the Subfocus remix).

Shockone came on at midnight with MC Xsessiv and lifted the energy in the room even higher. By now the place was starting to pack out, although truthfully I have seen it much more uncomfortably crowded in there; there was still room to dance around without getting stomped on. It was nice to see that Knowledge Music hadn’t oversold the gig when they easily could have done so.

Shockone’s set was moving around from dubstep to jump-up and back again seamlessly. The crowd was jumping around and lapping it up, and he was jumping around behind the decks with just as much enthusiasm. It really was an amazing party vibe in the club on this night, evidenced by the beaming smiles on everyone in the room. Again my personal highlights from the set were from Chase & Status; a very fast-paced mix of Hurt You and much later one of their newer tracks Let You Go.

As this was his first Australian tour, Netsky was obviously better known to most people for his production than his DJing and I was very curious to see how he would follow on from the fierce energy that Muller and Shockone had built. To his credit, I don’t think he lost any momentum at all and played a really fantastic set, again seamlessly mixing up genres although with a few less dub step tracks than were played earlier. There has been some criticism because he was using Serato but if the tunes are great and the crowd is jumping I personally don’t care what you’re mixing on. I think you could be using all kinds of technology and still play a shit set.

The set was jam packed with a lot of his own tracks which I’m sure made everybody happy judging from the crowd reaction, including Mellow and Secret Agent. Nestky was also bouncing around behind the decks. I’m not sure if the flanno shirt he was wearing was a cheeky nod to Perth fashion sensibilities but he must have been boiling up there on the stage. I did notice that a lot of the background lighting had been toned down while he was playing, but I think the music was speaking for itself.

The energy was seriously relentless. I Refuse was followed by Escape. There was a nod to Hospital Records’ label mate High Contrast with If We Ever. At this point the bar downstairs was pretty much deserted and I noticed that even the bar staff were dancing around and getting into the tunes. My personal highlight for the entire evening was when he dropped Iron Heart and there was much furious dancing on my part during this song. Haddaway’s What is Love would probably have to win the prize for ‘most bizarre song to close out a drum & bass set’ but it was still received with good humour by the crowd.

By 3am, I was ready to call it a night and what a fantastic night it was from start to finish. It’s always such a great experience when you get to see one of your favourite producers play and they deliver a set that exceeds your expectations.