Last week was the special free edition of NRGetic Romancer (featuring Adrenaline), and the turnout was pretty good. We were worried beforehand that Friday would be difficult for most people, and although again a lot of the regular ravers were missing, the numbers were eventually made up by a big group of unfamiliar faces. If they keep coming to future events, then that’ll be a real result.

I was up first this time, and it was pretty interesting to see how different the opening slot crowd can be. Actually, the regulars who had made it in time were dancing away, but with so few people it’s almost impossible to build the kind of atmosphere you need for high bpms. I don’t like mixing under 170bpm for too long though, so what to do next time if I’m opening…

Anyway, I was incredibly grateful to the people who made along in time for my set – especially big thanks to Eirik, Magnus, Yuhei (and his girlfriend), Mai, Shinosan and Akibakei. The plan this time was to start slowly, and then see if I could get the bpm up to ‘normal set’ speed by the end. There were a few new/unreleased tunes I haven’t heard through the Cube PA before, so I thought I’d take the chance this time to test them out – some of them got the crowd going, so that’s good to know for the future. I thought that my mixing was technically pretty bad this time, with a lot of stupid slips, but people don’t seem to have noticed them…instead the biggest problems were the jumps in the sound levels – I was using a new audio interface, and it had a lot more power than I was expecting. By next time I should be more used to it.

On to the tracklist:

01. The Prodigy – Claustrophobic Sting
02. The Prodigy – Full Throttle
03. The Prodigy – No Good (Start the Dance)
04. Lab 4 – Groove Overdrive (Turbo Charge 2005)
05. Psycho Keaton – Hellnight (Android Lime remix)
06. Hase – Disintegration
07. Pain on Creation & Orfeus – The Sanctuary
08. Epyx & Cyrez vs Fea – Unihalvaus
09. Epyx & Cyrez – The Most Masochist
10. Alek Szahala – Unholy Word
11. Twisted Freq – Innocence (AMS remix)
12. Substanced – Freeform Mercury
13. Trevor Jones – Last of the Mohicans (Alek Szahala remix)
14. Alek Szahala – Voices of Babylon
15. Sonic – Inside the Ride

Since hearing Claustrophobic Sting and the other Jilted Generation tracks as a 13 year old I’ve wanted to play/hear them through big speakers, and so I thought this was a good chance. After the Prodigy opening, it was good fun to play a few of my favourite Hard NRG tracks, and I was pretty happy with how The Sanctuary linked to the freeform…The Most Masochist is an amazing tune for when things are heating up towards the end of the set, and although it’s actually 160bpm it pitches up really well – I’ll definitely be using it again. All the over 170bpm tracks are favourites of mine, and Last of the Mohicans followed by Voices of Babylon is lovely melody overload…. On a less good note, I ended on Inside the Ride (to give Cogi some more time to prepare), but it didn’t have anything like the impact of April’s set. Ah well.

Cogi’s set was a mixing masterclass as usual, and 100% dark psy. He seems to have stopped the mixing in of older FINRG tracks now and then, but it keeps the atmosphere consistently dark and thumping. As usual, I can’t name the tunes without a tracklist (except my old favourite, Instrumental), but if you’ve seen any of the recent Cogi videos on YouTube it was more of the same – great stuff.

Next up were the Full Circle DJs, with Yousuke and Buzzmasta playing back to back for the first time this year. The Live PAs have been going really well, but B2B there’s a lot more energy, plus the selection is always good. This time was UK-style freeform, and though I’m becoming less keen on that sound as time goes on, it’s easy to dance to and definitely got the crowd going. There was even a bit of Yousuke’s trademark mixing into drum and bass towards the end, which he doesn’t usually do at NRGetic Romancer.

Betwixt & Between once again dominated the whole event, and some of the crowd seem increasingly like they’re just waiting for his set to start. After the slower, darker set last event he played his ‘mid-range’ tracks this time – not so dark but with a lot of 2008-9 style melodies. Starting off with his classic set-opener Self Extortion he ran through Hesotarou Tankobu, Dust to Dust, The Moon From Below, Zusammengehorigkeit and two or three of his newer work-in-progress tunes. Matter of Fact was in there too, once of my favourites from last year – it might not have the power of some of his other tunes, but he definitely nailed the melody/structure in that one. Finishing off with City of Solitude, Guld then took over.

Guld’s set was another of his classics, running through most of his anthems, with an epic encore sequence at the end. He opened once again with Proteus’ remix of Verta ja Lihaa and played his own City of Solitude remix, Nightmare Freak and DJ X’s brand new remix of Hannya – a very thumping version with a completely different feel to the original. Towards the end he used Last of the Mohicans and Voices of Babylon too, so I got the rare chance to ‘dance’ to them as well as listen from up in the DJ booth. Mohicans was part of an encore including No House and Almegiddo, but by that time I was pretty dead… Anyway, it was yet another great set, with plenty of mad effects thrown in from the brand new Studio Cube mixer.

With that, the event was over – next time (December) will be held on a Saturday as normal. Thanks again to everyone who made it along, hopefully we’ll have a good turnout for the final Romancer of 2009, too.

Thanks for the photos/video this time go to Cogi and Soham