I’ve been really busy with music-related stuff this past week, but I’m back from NRGetic Romancer now and I’ll try to get a post or two up today. First of all, here’s a quick roundup of last month’s Operation Karma – I haven’t seen any video yet, but it was one of the best events I’ve been to in the past year, I think, so it’s definitely worth a mention.

You might remember the event was in Kawasaki? I nearly ended up missing the last train out there, but arrived about 12.40am. The area around the station isn’t the easiest to understand, but I bumped into Alabaster on the way to the club, and he luckily knew where we should be going.

I somehow didn’t notice beforehand, but KA-NA was playing second on the night…she’s one of the few DJs that I’ll go to see regardless of who else is playing, so I was really disappointed to only catch the end of her set. Talking to Minagi, it seems like she played her standard selection, with a lot of Alek Szahala and finishing off with some of Betwixt & Between’s older, darker tracks (Mirage and Reincarnation).

Next was Tokyo Hardcore Construction’s Kanon, playing dutch gabber with melodic breakdowns as usual. Her selection was wonderful again, and the first track was a great set opener, changing tempo from industrial to hard gabber and back again. She showed that she can adjust to a crowd too, playing a bit of semi-happy hardcore to get people moving before the gabber kicks came back in for the rest of the set.

Alabaster was supposed to follow Kanon, but his gear decided to die completely just as he was about to start. Minagi stepped in with a few hard house/freeform tunes (including Sam One’s Parasonic), before AT and Rinko started up their b2b set instead. Both AT and Rinko are regulars at NRGetic Romancer (and Hell’s Gate before that), but I had no idea that they mixed too. I wasn’t sure what to expect, but AT in particular played almost entirely Finnish freeform plus some unusual Betwixt tracks. Mostly using older tunes, he played Rx and Carbon Based’s Reptile, Nomic’s Fortuna and Betwixt & Between’s Kamsheen. All are tunes I haven’t heard for months (and almost never live), which was great. Rinko played some happier trancecore style tunes, plus some game-music remixes. Maybe the tunes didn’t quite work together in a b2b situation, but things started fitting together more as the set went on. Talking to AT after the set, I found out that it was his debut, which made it even more impressive.

Alabaster eventually got things working, and then came up with a brilliant set that probably suited the later time slot better. He started off with a fantastic track he’s been working on for a while now (untitled so far, I think), with some great twisty synths…I’m really looking forward to that one. Following that were a few of his recent favourites, including Angel of Hell, Synthetic Paradise and Voices of Babylon, plus some of his own tracks. Once again the mixing was top class, and he finished things off with a couple of more gabber style tunes. Very impressive stuff, and it seems like it was the first time for a few of the NRGetic Romancer/Hell’s Gate crowd to see him live.

Finishing the event was Minagi, and his mixing has really come on a lot since last year – it was a great set, and again almost entirely my kind of tunes. He started off with some hard house, going into NRG and then freeform. The selection was very good and included Twisted Freq’s Frozen Parts of Hell, Epyx & Cyrez’s Polyhedra 08 and many more…I’m having a memory blank at the moment, but trust me, it was a great set. From Polyhedra there was a bit of a back to back with DJ MATT (the co-organiser of the event, and the first DJ to play on the night), with plenty of anime samples played between freeform and hardcore tracks.

The whole event was far better than I was expecting, and it’s not often I have the chance to hear almost 100% Hard NRG/freeform for a whole night, so well done to Minagi and everyone involved. Aside from some problems with the sound system (speakers cutting out, that sort of thing) and Alabaster’s tech trouble, this was a really promising first event. The next one’s in September, I saw the flyer last night, but like an idiot forgot to take one…I think one of the guests will be Quad, though, and once again in Kawasaki.