What with a trip to Tokyo, the completion of NRG Monogatari 2, and that pesky ’employment’ thing, the last couple of weeks have been verging on the chaotic. Anyway, I’m back again, and I now know why Alek Szahala’s website is full to the brim with folk eulogising his latest set. Quite possibly the best I’ve ever witnessed live, at NRGetic Romancer Alek (perhaps wisely) played a lot harder than his Australian sets of the last couple of years, and even appeared at the end of the night / early morning for a b2b finale with Guld.

Having earlier dashed around Tokyo in an apartment-checking blur (I’ll soon be living in leafy-ish Mejiro), I managed to be late enough to miss Horny’s schranz set once again, and so things started for me with Cogi’s dark NRG/Freeform. There were a fair few classics, Japanese and Finnish, although it’s been far too long, and I’ve forgotten the titles of a couple of them (what’s that tune with the gravelly-voiced fellow talking about ‘a bullet-shaped hole where the answer should be’?). Once again, a tracklist would be nice – I’ll see what I can do. It was a great set, and it might be good if Cogi was shifted another hour or so further down the schedule, as his last two or three efforts have been far too good to be ‘warm-ups’ while the crowd is still arriving.

By the end of the night it was easy to focus on Alek’s performance, but it’s worth mentioning that the Full Circle DJs came up with their best set so far. Playing a lot of new stuff, it’s obvious why there’s talk of releases on some British labels – their sound is very close to UK Freeform these days. With DJ Yousuke on guitar, and Buzzmasta on percussion/random bits and pieces, there was a Full Circle remix of Buzzmasta’s For Action, as well as Gate Crasher, their Hellfire remix, and Halcyon. There was also room for Edge, one of my current favourites, with hard trance style melodies combined with the occasional classic jungle/old skool hardcore breakbeat. The set flowed very well, and what with Buzzmasta’s tunes appearing on releases in the UK and Japan (including the upcoming Energetic Trance 2) and DJ Yousuke’s CD release/mini-tour with Arkitech, things are looking good for the rest of this year.

Betwixt & Between’s set was remarkably similar to the mix I’ve been fiddling with for the last eternity or so, which might give a hint or two as to the kind of thing my tracklist leans towards. One disappointment was that the track featuring a sort-of-flute/the lead from The Awakening wasn’t present, as I’d definitely like to hear that one again. There was one new track – a version of mainstream trance anthem Airwave, by Rank 1. An absolutely awesome remix, it keeps the hands-in-the-air breakdown of the original but adds just the right amount of Betwixt & Between insanity when things kick back up again. The main melody sounds a tad too busy when pitched up to 170bpm, but I’m not really complaining, of course. Surendrajit was also in there, and it will surely sound even better should Betwixt come up with a few more tracks of that style to surround it with. Finally, it was reassuring to note that even the man himself finds 原子水母 difficult to mix into anything else, storming tune though it undoubtedly is.

Fittingly, Alek Szahala followed right after Betwixt, although the bpm dropped slightly with his opening tune, Balag Lamara. I’m sure everyone knows this one, the monumental intro sequence leading into a fierce, driving main section that doesn’t really ease up for a moment – the perfect first track. From that point, the set continued with the grinding synths while the bpm gradually increased, through tunes such as the incredible Voices of Babylon and the newly-released Maruuk, Things took a turn for the even-harder with an absolutely fantastic edit of Vengeance, (featuring a demented new melody that suddenly leaps out from nowhere, mid-track), followed immediately by Anmitzcuacah. Another edit (or perhaps just the final version) was Lagas, and the epic, extended breakdown, followed by the uplifting lead, makes Airwave seem positively understated. In the midst of all this, hearing Supriya live was another ‘special moment’, as they say (and if they don’t, they should) – the tune that got me into Freeform, played at the event where I heard my first Freeform set. Good stuff indeed.

Following Alek’s set, I found myself wondering if Guld could keep the crowd moving, as I was exhausted after an hour or so of hilariously bad ‘dancing’. I needn’t have worried, as he managed to come up with yet another great hour (or more?), running through all the classics. He played Hatral again, which really is a great tune, but there was no sign of the I See the Things That You Don’t See remix (or that ever-so-slightly mad Ryuichi Sakamoto Christmas track). At the end of the set, Alek Szahala returned for a final b2b that went on for a good 20mins or more. In total, punctuated by calls for encore after encore, they made it through Ephexis/Carbon Based/Rx’s Devastator, Alek’s Firecloud and The Last of the Mohicans remix, the original Eternal Cannon, plus a couple more that escape me at the moment. Finally, with everyone continuing to call for more and the clock reading close to 6am, Alek played the insane speedcore track that concluded his hardcore set in Helsinki a few months ago. Suffice to say, trying to dance to that after the previous 6 hours was too much for most, but nicely (?) finished off what was an incredibly enjoyable night.

Huge congratulations go to Guld for organising one of the best events so far at NRGetic Romancer, and although the crowds might not have been as overwhelming as I was predicting, this has undoubtedly raised the profile of Japanese NRG another notch or two abroad. We can but hope that Alek makes another trek across the globe to play here again in the future, and when he does, he may well find that the group of producers he inspired this time have taken things up another level as a result.

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Once again, many thanks to Cogi and Guld for the photo usage.