After a long time between Fuses, I was starting to feel like there was something missing from my life. I was about to get it back in a big way. There was a lot of controversy surrounding the venue change from the Areebar to Babylon; the thing that bothered me the most was the change in the price of beer.

I rocked up to Babylon to find the main room completely filled with smoke. So much so that I couldn’t even tell who was playing. Moving out past the pool tables to the back room I found that DJ Jay was dishing out some very nice hip-hop. I dropped back in to the main room to find that the smoke had cleared and Dave Norgate was behind the wheels of steel (or plastic as it were). I’d never seen Norgate before and was rather pleasantly surprised with his particular brand of slamming proggy goodness. I can’t usually dance too much to Prog, but I couldn’t help myself when it came to Norgate’s selection. He dropped a remix of Thriller that blew me, and everyone around me, completely out of the water.

Meanwhile, in the backroom, Boycott was serving up some of the phattest and chunkiest breaks on the menu with Didj on the bongos, giving percussive backing. This kid rocks, and I think we’ll be seeing a hell of a lot more of him in the near future.

Back to the main room, and Anjay had taken up the vinyl challenge with some deep, driving and tough breaks. I got there on time to hear a searing track of his own production. Boycott must have been doing something right, because when I went back to catch a bit more I found the back room crowd spilling out of the entrance, into the pool room. Venturing back to the main room after a bit of a breather I had a bit more of a boogie. He finished up with Thomas Bangalter with Love to Give.

Azza started off quite tribal, and while quite good; it just was just not quite what I was after, so I ducked back to main room to see Ryan Papa who was busting out a progressive remix of Infusions Starwater, which he followed up later with a nice electroey rendition of Ladytron’s Seventeen. I had a nice little jive to Papa smurf and then headed back to see what Azza had for me. I was glad I did, because I found that the lad had indeed moved past the tribal side of things with Underworlds Cowgirl then handed over to Tarlo.

Over in the main room Kaos started off with some light and fun Drum ‘n’ Bass, though there wasn’t as much of an audience to start with. After about twenty minutes or so there were quite a few punters out there bopping away. I got back to Tarlo in time to bust a move to Way Out West’s Stealth. I spent the last remainder of the night flitting between the two rooms, catching short bursts of each set. I was like a dog presented with two big fat juicy steaks; not knowing which to eat and settling for taking bites off each at random intervals.

In the main room I found that an impromptu MC had joined Kaos, and he took it down a notch with some cruisy shit before belting out a truly hardcore bass line before playing some BLIM, botchit stylee. Then it was back once again to Tarlo with PMT’s remix of Red Pill. Tarlo finished, but Kaos was still tearing up the dancefloor before ending with Andy C’s Bodyrock, a true crowd pleaser.
The music policy was, as always top-notch and represented a huge variety of styles. The crowd was good, though the vibe just wasn’t the same. Babylon and the Areebar are very different clubs, and the atmosphere for this one for some reason just seemed a little more serious (Though it also might have had something to do with the fact that, because of increased beer prices, I wasn’t blind drunk). The smoke machine ran perhaps a little too rampant, making it very hard to see at times, and a little hard to breath. The back room was too small for the amount of punters that had tried to squeeze into it. So the question is I guess: would a Fuse at any other venue smell as sweet? Maybe not. But it’s still the best damn smelling party we’ve got. Lets just hope that it’s not too long before the next installment.