5 years from when it all started in Sydney, its now held in Sydney, Perth, Adelaide, Brisbane and Melbourne. And it’s only getting BIGGER and BETTER each year.

This year in Sydney it was held on the June long weekend at the Hordern Complex.

Combing the Forecourt – 3D World, Fox & Lion, Fuse Bar, Hordern Pavillion, Royal Hall of Industries, The Byron Kennedy Hall and The Forum all as stages, with music from 12 pm till 10pm.

Across the many stages they had some massive acts such as; !!! (CHK! CHK! CHK!), Mix Master Mike, Kid Kenobi & MC Shureshock, Scribe, Van She, local act ‘Grafton Primary’, Cassius, Steve Lawler, another local act ‘The Potbelleez’, the massive Stephan Bodzin, Gang Bang DJ’s (hosting their own stage ‘Byron Kennedy Hall’), AJAX, Miami Horror, Gameboy Gamegirl and so many more.

You might be thinking this line up sounds familiar, and you’re right, it does. Quite a few of the acts also played at Winter Warehouse, at the AIS on the 31st May, 08.

Out of all the acts, the one who caught my eye the most would have to have been Stephan Bodzin. his sound is kind of Jazzy / Electro. I love it. And its really quite smooth and relaxing.

And below is a clip of Stephan DJing in Paris. You will see its in a club and its a lot harder that I mentioned previous, its more like a rave atmosphere. Check it out.

Its set for the Queens Birthday long weekend at One of Canberras new clubs, ‘Celebrity Lounge’.

After being out on Friday night I am starting to realise Winter is coming. One of Canberra’s normal hot spots ‘Academy’ was very quiet. Even the free champagne couldn’t tempt people to come out into the cold.

I’m confident that a night pumped full on hard dance, trance and DNB could tempt people out into the cold. And an always bonus, they’re Australian! It’s always good to support the locals, and they have my vote.

The date for this is Sunday, June 8th. 9:00pm and will set you back $15.00.

For those who know DJ Archie, you know what to expect, for those who don’t, check out his web page: http://www.djarchie.net

Archie’s web page has so much information on it. While on his page you will hear some of his music. There is a part on the site that has his new music which you can download. Its called fresh tunes.

Dj Kranky is one of the other headliners. I hadn’t heard of him before so i did some research. On his site you can tune in and listen to sounds from him and other dj’s. This is what to expect:

• Mondays – Happy Hardcore & Freeform
• Tuesdays – Hardstyle
• Wednesdays – Trance, Breaks & Drum n Bass
• Thursdays – Hard Dance, Hard House, Hard Trance & NRG
• Fridays – Breaks, Electro House, Progressive House, Tech House & Techno
• Saturdays – A Bit of Everything & Special Events
• Sundays – Drum n Bass & Jungle

For more info check out: http://www.krankydigital.com

The other headliner making the trio is DJ Shad. Again i hadn’t heard much about Shad, so i did some research. Again when you go to the webpage he has music playing in the background. I liked the music he had playing, it was called Electro S*ut by Kamui. (Although Kamui were a German band, But i’m sure he mixes with there music..) His web page is: http://www.myspace.com/pitchblacktrance

So if you checked out those sites you know what you’re in for!

And there is many more local artists dj-ing aswell! Should be a great night out!

The line up as follows;

~Mixmaster Mike (Beastie Boys) ~Cassius (DJ/Live, France)
~Utah Saints (‘Something Good’ UK) ~Bonde Do Role (Live, Brazil)
~Hybrid (UK) ~Mr Oizo (Ed Banger)
~The Potbelleez (Live) ~Van She Tech
~Kid Kenobi & MC Shureshock ~Ajax (Aus #1 DJ)
~TV Rock Game ~Boy/Game Girl (Sweaty/Wet, Live)
~The Aston Shuffle (‘For Everyone’) ~Jeff Drake & MC Forey
~Hump Day Project (Syd) ~Club Junque (Syd)
~Chris Fraser ~RyFy
~Tim Galvin ~Escha
~DJ Kiz ~Scottie Fischer
~Ashley Feraude ~Fourthstate
~Sean Kelly

If your anything like me, you’ll be suss as to why we’re getting these big names down in little old Canberra. And so many of them.

So i did my research and found that there is a few up coming Sydney events which these kids are performing at. Its great that they decided to visit the Capital.

So if we all do our part and keep attending these events they put on, we’ll get more and more!

Also to mention, this is an all ages event, so for the youngens i have put up something they can have a dance to! My personal favourite!

Pnau have launched their “We Are Back Tour’ and they hit the Canberran grounds tomorrow night! with 7 shows following.

There playing at the university of Canberra @ 7:30pm. i am so keen to go BUT i play pool Wednesday nights and probably can’t get out of it.

The best part about it all is that they are AUSTRALIAN! they have been around for a while but resurface every now and again with big hits.

Below is a film clip of one of there big hits at the moment.. BABY!

\’Baby\’ by Pnau

You’ll see from the film clip they are fun loving people, not much seriousness when there doesn’t have to be!

Pnau is made up of 2 people; Pete Mayes & Nick Littlemore. They have a pretty sweet myspace page, so if your interested in more detail check it out. http://www.myspace.com/pnaupnau

If i make it to the concert i will update this page with more awesome-ness.

Yes the skies opened up and it poured like madness. i had never seen anything like this before. For those who didn’t go; there were people running and diving on there stomachs, sliding down a hill that had water running down it and pooled into mud at the bottom, You missed out on some top music, but atleast you didn’t have to throw out a pair of jeans and a top..

For those who did go will remember the mud-slide, the pouring rain, the lack of shelter, people having mud-fights, when you tried to walk anywhere, you would get mud flicked all up the back of you (if you hadn’t fallen over by this stage then the mud flicks were quite upsetting).

all in all, the idea was good, the location worked (minus the rain) and the bands chosen were great.

one of my favourite memories was dancing in the rain, on the hill in my $2 poncho, my jeans turned up full of mud and a drink in my hand. Oh, and a good song!

this is a fairly good idea of how it was set up: so imagine the stage in front of you. a hill sloping down (your at the bottom) to your left, a hill sloping down (your at the bottom) to your right. and where you are standing there is a flag pole next to you with the Australian flag on it.  Are you following?

i guess kind of like a gully.

i found a clip to show you what i mean

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=AmKllBe1d9c&feature=related 

this is my favourite song at the moment and has been for a while..

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=V3tLbRZvvN0&feature=related 

i was just sloshing around trying to find the line up, and i found an awesome article on the day on In The Mix, i’ll post the link: http://www.inthemix.com.au/events/reviews/35385/Foreshore_Commonwealth_Place_Canberra_011207 .

It will fill you in on the blanks i missed!

Although i did manage to get a pretty good run down of how the night went..

So they had before acts to get the crowd going and then Muscles came out, played the same set he does every time, same order apparently, played for 40 minutes or so then left. Oh, and he came out late as well. And then they had some more after-acts to carry to night on.

So from what i was told there were a few un-happy campers. But none the less, I’m sure everyone had a great night and would see him again!

If anyone did go, let me know what you thought!

Just for those Muscles lovers..

And for those are don’t know muscles, check out this:

So i went looking for a video clip or some sort of video footage and found nothing..

BUT.. i did come across my next blog. woohoo!

So basically for those who don’t know what Q-Dance is: its a rave and the Dj’s are/or were all under the Q record label.

Below is a link to the Australian Q-Dance web site. Currently on the site they have the pics up from the Sydney, Melbourne and Brisbane shows they did. (info current as of 28/3/08)

http://www.q-dance.com.au/

The DJ’s included in the Sydney show, which I went to were: ‘Zany’, ‘The Prophet’, ‘(Lady) Dana’, ‘Donkey Rollers’, ‘Luna’, ‘Brennan Heart’, ‘Mark Sherry’ and ‘Alex Kidd Vs Kutski’.

Anyone else who went would agree it was absolutely amazing.

Its ten times better than the home page of the site (www.q-dance.com.au)

The laser show is just awesome. At first it was hurting my eyes, but then i had a few more Smirnoff Double Blacks and i didn’t even notice the lasers.

The lasers would go with the beat of the music, so if the beat was dropping really slow and long, the lasers would go from top to bottom at the speed of the music, it was un-real.

For a taste of what Q-Dance is about, see the link below.
http://www.q-dance.com.au/index2.html

Q-Dance is from the Netherlands, i have listed the site below, although it is it norse (i think that is how you would say it) you can still get the idea of how big it is over there.

http://www.q-dance.nl/

This video is of ‘Donkey Rollers’. They were one of my favorite acts of the night.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pXVJF7fhESA

The ‘Donkey Rollers’ are made up of 3 people; ‘DJ Zany’, ‘The Pitcher’ and ‘Cenoginerz’. For more info on the Donkey Rollers see the link below.

http://profile.myspace.com/index.cfm?fuseaction=user.viewProfile&friendID=101374316

There is a Q Dance bus, and the Dj’s and a few lucky people actually got to cruise around Sydney in it and meet the Dj’s and so on. I found a clip which shows people on the bus, and some parts of the Q Dance show. There are some good shots of the lasers in the clip so check it out.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Pmsir9NKKC8

I could go on for ages with this but that would just be boring to those who aren’t interested in ‘Hard style’, so to finish up i have found a good clip of ‘DJ Zany’ . this was his opening song. You will see in the film clip how pumped everyone was for Zany.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kjSO0bB0KJM

The line up was fantastic for the $60 ticket, with the likes of ‘Spider Bait’, ‘Midnight Juggernauts’,'The Beautiful Girls’, ‘Bliss n Eso’, ‘The Potbelleez’, ‘Kid Kenobi & MC Shureshock’, (for the locals they will know) ‘E.E.S’ and headlining the day was ‘Sneaky Sound System’.

So as you can by just looking at the day it was going to be huge! And that it was. It was a mere 38 degrees and held at the Botanical Gardens.

One of my funny memories from the day was walking up to the stage and seeing the “mosh-pit” full of 14-16 year old girls jumping around and waving there arms in the air (which had there “under-age” wrist band) thinking they were so cool because they were at a concert.

I think ‘The Potbelleez’ were awesome. The chick in it was really good and really got in to. But i would have to say that ‘kid Kenobi & MC Shureshock’ were really good. They should have been on later, not in the middle of the day. i didn’t like ‘Spiderbait’.

Here is a video of ‘Sneaky Sound System’playing at Dusty Days 08

http://au.youtube.com/watch?v=pCxq4Lys3IY

Below is a video of E.E.S playing. I thought it would be cool to put them up for people who don’t know them.

http://au.youtube.com/watch?v=Ylbd9Y_JzU0&feature=related

The 2 members that make up ‘Daft Punk’; Thomas Bangalter & Guy-Manuel de Homem-Christo http://www.liveguide.com.au/flyers/live_event_flyer_527382.jpg

It was a great day, the weather was in a mind of its own with beautiful sunshine then turning to pelting rain then back to beautiful sunny skies and warm weather to dry all the wet people who were dancing in the rain to the before acts.

The before acts were really good, with Cut Copy, The Presets , SebastiAn and Kavinsky, Muscles and The Bang Gang Deejays to name a few. One of my favorites was Muscles.

The few times i have seen him he always gets the crowd going.

The Daft act itself was amazing. The played all there big hit songs, and finished off with “one more time”. They had the known set up with the Spectacular Triangle and the two displays of one of them on each side of the Triangle.

Some footage from the Perth Concert.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6grBChXl4T4&feature=related

That’s all for now. But i will be back soon!