Once again the ravers of Adelaide have been blessed with a brand new venue, this time the old Downtown building in the heart of the city. For many it was time to reminisce about countless childhood days spent gaming and playing there. For others it was time to get excited as we readied to party in a never before experienced venue.
Upon entering the building I was taken straight back to my raving experiences in the warehouse at Port Adelaide a couple of years ago. You can’t beat unused venues for their ‘underground’ feel and atmosphere factor. For those not familar with the building, it has 2 quite large levels. The first of which opens out to raised sections both to your left and right. This room, Bigdog Arena would see a range in drum and bass styles throughout the night. From this room and up some stairs saw you in to the System 6 room, catering for the hard dance massive.
The girls and I didn’t find some dancefloor action until Noddy and John Doe hit the decks alongside Pab and Griff on mic downstairs, giving us some tunes we could really shake our bootys to. A quick check upstairs and I found Brendon also firing things up and before long we found ourselves drawn back there bouncing along to the deep rhythms and sweeping melodies and then banging basslines. Mmm!
Back downstairs and from the comfort of the bean bags, I watched as people moved and grooved to Presha (NZ). Not having seen him before I didn’t mind what I heard, hearing older and new tunes alike and getting up to boogie myself to an all time fave Shake Ur Body.
Looking to dance some more I once again found myself back upstairs to catch Kane mixing it up very nicely with his driving and uplifting mix, with a selection of tunes both old and new and ending on a note of controversy; an interesting remix of Eminem’s Without Me. I’m looking forward to catching him at Frantic in the UK next year.
I thought it was great timing when I ducked downstairs to catch Patch on decks with Amy Jackson on the mic captivating the audience with her lovely vocals. Even better when they went on to play the new Bigdog release Can’t Resist You. I’m a big fan of beautiful female vocals, Amy definitely has one very beautiful voice.
In keeping with the underground feel Nil and Miss Tracy started up with some police sirens and went on to give the dancefloor what they were looking for, to keep it nicely packed throughout. These guys always deliver the goods when they are in town, this being no exception, with the dancefloor crew loving every minute.
Wrapping up Devious delivering some, at times, cool tunes but that really wasn’t what I was looking for. To be honest I was looking forward to seeing Odyssey show us what he’s got, having recently returned from a trip to the UK. So, disheartened, I made it downstairs to be immediately picked up again by the funked up beats of Fiction and Mark 7 .
And so another night came to an end. If you were looking for huge numbers, then this wasn’t the party for you. If you were looking for quality tunes, together with good sound and lighting then this night gave you just what you were looking for. Nice one Ultraworld.
