I hope everyone enjoyed the week or so without Thank You For The Horse? Sadly (?) the site hasn’t been bought out by a group of freeform loving millionaire Russians, or anything like that – instead, the domain name expired. Oops, eh? Anyway, everything is shipshape now, so I’ll try to catch up on a few things from the last week or so.

First of all, the end of last month saw Hell’s Gate at Studio Cube. Although I was a bit late (just for once), the post-midnight DJs were all excellent. Ayako’s hardhouse set was right up there with her efforts at Dance or Die vs Hell’s Gate – maybe even harder this time, and she came up with a sackload of tunes I’ve never heard before.

KA=>NA played one of the best sets I’ve heard for a while – she’d told me the day before that she would be playing Alek Szahala’s tracks, but I wasn’t expecting the whole first half of the set to be Alek only! Starting off with Balag Lamara, she also played Maruuk, Ashurnishishi, Supriya and Man Eaten (been far too long since I last heard that). The second half was a a mix of Hard NRG from Japan and elsewhere, and it’s safe to say that she’s got the Khaotic Domension CD – tracks included Mirage, Dasein and Galatea. It seems like we’ve got very similar taste in tunes, then, and it was really a great set. I couldn’t make it to Energy Cocktail in the end, so I’m really glad I caught this one.

I have to say that KA=>NA completely overshadowed Chucky’s guest performance, who followed immediately after. Of course, I’m biased, as her style of NRG/freeform is much more my thing, but his set did have its moments. Zio was the final DJ of the evening, and as is normal at Hell’s, he played 100% Hardstyle. It’s not my favourite genre, but this was a really nice set, with enough melodic moments to break up the pounding tunes. I was getting quite into it by the end, and so even if I’m not going to become a Hardstyle head for a while yet, I’ll be looking forward to Zio’s next Hell’s set to continue my education.

The next Hell’s Gate is the 14th of next month, and the lineup has just been announced. More on that soon, though….

(By the way, that’s Zio up at the top of the page, in full Hell’s Gate mode)