at·mos·phere
n.
1. The air or climate in a specific place.
2. An aesthetic quality or effect, especially a distinctive and pleasing one, associated with a particular place.
3. Eg: “Hyperactive parties have the best atmosphere at their parties due to the skillful DJ’s, smiling security and a happy crowd.”

Tired of expensive parties that didn’t deliver, parties that promised so much but provided nothing, DJ Freo started the all ages Hyperactive series of warehouse parties. “We felt that the scene desperately needed a fun, down to earth, no hype party.” – DJ Freo. In December of last year, this party was delivered. There wasn’t a single complaint about the party. With so much positive feedback, organisers hastily began planning an even bigger and better party to fill the void left by the recent over-commercialisation of the scene.

A last minute venue change (2 p.m. 29/3/03) forced organisers to leave and move the party to another warehouse. In nine tense hours, all of the lights, sound equipment and decor were packed up, and set up again at the new venue 10 km away. It was impossible to believe upon entering. Friendly staff greeted myself and about 100 other people, desperate to re-live the positive vibe encountered last December. Dark hallways led directly to the dancefloor where DJ Kelsta greeted us with a bassline that echoed to all corners of the room providing that distinctive warehouse sound. A remix of “Twisted” could be heard as I continued past the DJ booth and headed into the chill out area. A tonne of effort had been put in to the pictures on the wall, hanging material from the roof and setting up televisions with old video game consoles. Shrieks of joy came from many ravers, ecstatic to see that they could play their favourite game from ten years ago. Kelsta soon veered away from the hard trance she began with and played a couple of techno based tunes to a crowd rapidly filling up the floor in front of her. She played with a very relaxed and friendly attitude coupled with some tight beat mixing and when I heard the melody of “Café del Mar”, it was time for me to join the crowd and warm up my dancing feet.

The eccentric Nick Compound, with his long frizzy hair bouncing in time with the beats, took Kelsta’s place at the turntables. He mixed his songs with incredible attention to detail and a few senior members of the crowd described his beat mixing skills as ”...the best we’ve ever heard.”. Playing a set focused mostly on Hard House blended with a few Hard Trance songs like “Jay Walker – Equinox”, Nick’s high energy performance encouraged the crowd before him to take their dancing to another level. We definitely did upon hearing his last song “And then they start to dance (Simon Eve Rmx)” as we showed our appreciation by cheering and applauding once the song ended.

A group of fans (or “ho’s” as they prefer to be called) had gathered in front of the DJ booth awaiting the dark acid sounds of DJ Jewelz. A cheeky grin seemed to mask the darkness of a few of her songs. Although not as scary as previous sets I have heard her play, a few better-known songs like “Resistance is futile” and “Trance Generators – Shadow” kept her ho’s, along with the rest of us shuffling up a storm (as well as quite an amount of dust left by a factory that hadn’t been used in five years). Handing out some copies of her demo CD “Acid Tales”, signing autographs and chatting with members of the crowd showed us a more tender side of her contradicting the darker style of music.

Towards the end of Jewelz’ set, the previous DJ’s that had played already, along with Tim Willox all played a vs set together to celebrate the ending of daylight savings time. It continued the happy and friendly theme of the night to watch all the DJ’s take turns in playing a song, while the others clapped and cheered them. The attendance levels had by now reached their peak, and they were treated to a plethora of anthems like “Thunder in paradise”, “Born Slippy”, “Voodoo People” and “Insane Asylum”.

Tim stayed on the decks for his set next, opening with “CJ Bolland – The Prophet”. He had been standing behind the DJ booth for most of the night, chatting with the performing DJ’s and helping some members of the crowd with the titles of the songs being played. It wasn’t only being a friendly person to chat to that earned him so much praise over the night. Impeccable beat mixing and a great selection of tracks showed us why he recently won the “Hard Kandy Bedroom vs Mainroom” DJ competition. Both the dancefloor and the chill out areas were now quite crowded, but late arrivals were still lining up out the front to buy a ticket to come inside. Their decision to come was indeed justified when Tim played “Excelsis” to the fever pitched ravers.

We were all were smiling and loving the atmosphere and some of the crowd doubted that it would continue this way until the end of the night. DJ Freo arrived behind the decks to make sure that the vibe he had created last December and was currently flowing throughout the warehouse continued. Casting aside the events of the day, Freo effortlessly put together one of his trademark sets – Hard, but with something a bit different. The Hard Trance came in the form of “Can you dig it?” and “The theme (Dumonde Rmx)” and the something that was a bit different was a remix of “The Sax Brothers – Bakerstreet”. Huge grins were plastered on the crowd’s faces at hearing the saxophone’s melody combined with an intense bassline that even made the weary get up and dance.

Usually seeing Nexus arrive at an arena signals the “beginning of the end” for the party because he’s generally appointed to do only the closing morning set. He was scheduled to do the closing set later on, but fortunately for us all, he was also asked to do a harder set first. It was truly remarkable to witness his flawless harder set leaving me to ponder if there was anything he couldn’t do. Obviously concentrating a lot to put on the best performance for the crowd, he rarely shows much emotion behind the turntables, but still took time to shake hands with some punters and share jokes. Playing songs like “Miss Shiva – Dreams (Cosmic Gate Rmx)” and “Mark Richardson – Hard Drive”, those in the crowd that still had enough energy to dance were definitely catered to.

Andrew Marsh began his set where Nexus left off, playing some Hard Trance songs and even threw in a few older anthems like “Prodigy – No Good”. He appeared to be having so much fun at the DJ console playing to the 200 or so punters that couldn’t bring themselves to leave the dancefloor. Natural light began streaming in through windows during his set but few punters planned to leave. The chill out rooms were now crowded with tired ravers looking for some respite as a few uplifting trance melodies like “Melt – Be Liquid” echoed down the hallway and filtered in to our ears.

Andrew started to play a little less hard and a little more trance towards the end of the set as Nexus joined him again behind the turntables. They played a miraculous set that seemed to enlarge the crowd rather than diminish it. Together they played classic trance songs (“Robert Miles – Children”, “Paul Van Dyk – Love Stimulation”, “Reflect – 3 in 1”) that had left a legacy since their time, mixed perfectly into each other until the sun was shining in and it was time to leave.

After a stressful day and night of tirelessly working towards their goal (see Freo quote above), they succeeded. With an advertising budget of $0, using only word of mouth and Internet forums, this Hyperactive party was nearly double the size of the last. It’s safe to say that this can be attributed to the atmosphere. Fresh fruit and icy poles were given away all night, incredibly skillful DJ’s and not one complaint from the punters as they departed, left us all with one last question: “When’s the next Hyperactive?”.