Saturday was my first THC, and it turned out to be a storming event – I was expecting a lot more speedcore/other undanceable genres, but it was mostly dark and nasty gabber, plus Technetium’s slightly incongruous Happy/J-Core. It was probably getting on for 1am by the time I finally arrived, so I’m not sure what was happening in the first couple of hours – but I was just in time for Stanfield’s set, one of the main reasons I was keen to get to this one. Relatively slow for gabber, it was a great set even if there were a few technical problems towards the end. Most of the tracks played were new to me, or I didn’t know the titles, and so Technetium’s set was pretty welcome. It took me back to my brief spell of mixing Tano*C-style Japanese hardcore a few years ago, and I picked up on some RED ALiCE classics, especially.

Of the other DJs, Kanon again played a great hour or so, with really top-class mixing and excellent selection. She played Lunch’s recent Tokyo Hardcore Construction track (heard in the recent promo video), and while I didn’t know many of the tunes, there was a fantastic track around the halfway point with a long female vocal/guitar breakdown, mixed in at just the right moment. Lunch was as good as expected (actually the first time I’ve seen him play live, I think), although I actually missed the changover from him to NDE, through a combination of dancing like a madman and recovering next to the air conditioner. Anyway, they played one of my favourite gabber tunes at some point – featuring the vocal line ‘Clap your hands if you want to die!’, the title escapes me right now…but truly a classic for all the family, that one.

I forgot that THC actually runs until 6am the following day, so this was a long night, even with my late arrival. It’s a great event though, and a few of the NRGetic Romancer crowd also made it along. Next one is January 2009.