(EQ/Stomp)

So what is the new tour accessory? T-shirts for sale at gigs perhaps, hats maybe? Wrong, nothing brings back memories of a night out like the tunes you heard, so to coincide with her Australian tour Lisa Lashes gives us Lashed in Australia.

As one of the biggest names on the Hard House circuit in both the UK and worldwide, Lisa has played in many countries and has released a swag of high selling tracks on labels like Tidy and Sundessential, as well as reaching a high of #9 in everybody’s favourite popularity contest, the DJ Mag Top 100 poll. So what does this latest Australian release and tour bring? Well this is progressive breaks at its best… just fucking with you, this is hard, driving house spread over two discs, building from hard to rocking, whetting your appetite for a Lashes two hour set.

Opening disc one, the sounds are very much trance influenced. Barley Legal get things moving with The Future and the trancey sounds are kept going through tracks from Greg Brookman and a Charlotte Birch/Colin Barrat collaboration, before Simon Eve’s track Rock Ya Mind gives the disc a traditional hard house sound. Also included, as the mix gets progressively harder, are stars of the “bouncier” sound, for want of a better word, Ingo, Jon The Dentist and Vinylgroover, the latter having two tracks featured. There is however a serious low point briefly with the hardstyle type track Rough Stuff. This is a genre that, for me, just lacks musicality as it is really just a hard drum beat left to do all the work. Thankfully this situation is quickly rectified as the mix gets a hell of a lot dirtier with some extremely dope tracks, Millenium Bitch from Dark by Design and New dimesion from Matt Williams lead quickly to the highlight of the disc, Drop This Like A Boulder from Billy Bunter and Jon Doe, a pair that are yet to disappoint me with a release. The disc closed out on a high note with I Like The Way from Matt Williams & Steve Hill. This is a mix which builds nicely and has a definite live feel about it as the needle skips on a number of occasions. Now I do love the sound of a live mix as opposed to a pro tooled computer compilation, but with the frequency this happens you would hope Lisa would have gone back, cleaned her vinyl and, rerecorded a couple of mixes.

Disc two is where its at for me as it picks up the pace and takes you higher, harder and faster without coming off cheesy. Starting with one of the men of the moment, Justin Bourne - Dance Flaw, the mix works quickly to Paul King and his Chemical Brothers sampling Block Rocking Beats. A blatant rip-off of a sample like this can only go one of two ways, and thankfully Paul doesn’t over use it, creating a dope hard house version of what was already a funky track. Shortly after Tremenda from Ilogik comes, possibly my favourite track of disc two. Guarantee, again from Justin Bourne, this time collaborating with Dynamic Intervention, and it’s a quality slab of hard house. Following up is a track that could be Lisa Lashes’ best piece of production yet, What Can You Do 4 Me? Other standout tracks latter in the mix are the Nick Sentience remix of Never Lost His Hardcore, the wicked Alien Thing track Beaver Express, and a couple back to back from Daley & Alex Carver, More Drugs and the wicked Go Bezerk – which is aptly named. The closer is a track I’m sure is used worldwide by male and female jocks alike Mad Gay Mafia with Who Wants To Fuck The DJ, a track that can be thrown on at the end of a set in order to do away with the pesky small talk off potential suitors. My only gripe on this mix is again near the end it develops problems with the needles skipping on consecutive tracks meaning both decks had a problem, after the first disc was littered with skips you would have thought Lisa would have done all in her power to fix the problem, but alas not.

Over two discs hear you do get some serious bang for your buck, 30 odd tracks as you would expect them to be played by Lisa over a two hour period, with a live feel. Definitely better than a tour T-shirt, so lets hope this new trend is here to stay.