Happy New Year indeed! I’ll start off this year’s posts with a nicely out-of-date note re. X-Treme Hard’s end of year party on the 21st of last month. Although I’m not the biggest fan of Gabber/Speedcore, it was a very good evening – even if the Full Circle Collective played for a slightly less than gargantuan 15 minutes (understandably, given the number of DJs playing). The couple of tunes that they had time to play were excellent, including DJ Yousuke on guitar (and vocals!), and a typical combination of Hardcore/Drum & Bass.

Other highlights (for me, at least) included DJ Sharpnel’s set and DJ Champ’s Happy Hardcore mix, but both were surely overshadowed by the Bingo session half way through the night! You couldn’t make it up, but the sight of a group of ravers checking off Bingo numbers was almost worth the price of admission alone (despite me not winning anything).

DJ Chucky definitely came up with among the best of the harder sets, and it was the first time to see him live. His mixing was very impressive indeed, but sadly his set (and most of the others) was augmented by MCs – I didn’t like them back in my Drum & Bass days, and I’m not much more of a fan now. Aside from that, it was all good fun, and surprisingly my first trip to Shibuya’s pokey (or should that be ‘intimate’?) Club Kinoto.