It’s taken a while to round up some photos/video of the last event (Cogi didn’t have his recorder or camera), but we’re all set now. Big thanks for the photos go to Shinosan, Eirik and Detch, and to Eirik again for the videos.

The crowd was smaller than we were hoping (especially as it was another free event), but Friday is difficult for a lot of ravers – the timing was pretty tight for me too. Despite all that, it turned out to be a great Romancer with a really nice atmosphere, and pretty high-bpm from start to finish.

I was first up again this time, and even though I hadn’t had much chance to think about my set, it turned out to be one of my best for a long time. Unfortunately it wasn’t recorded, but it might be worth sticking with the same sort of pattern for the next one. Here’s the tracklist:

01. Nomic – Penance
02. Nomic – Desolated Dreams
03. Nomic – Steradian
04. Proteus – Illuminati
05. Epyx & Cyrez – The Most Masochist
06. Hase – Disintegration
07. DJ Rx – Hellfire
08. Guld – Hannya X (Android Lime remix)
09. Cyrez – Private Demon
10. Nightforce – Symphony for the Devil
11. Matt England – Consciousness
12. Alek Szahala – Lagash
13. Substanced – Crank Cleopatra
14. Alek Szahala – Voices of Babylon
15. Re-form – My Sickness
16. Re-form – Silver Cube

The idea this time was to deliberately start things off with a lot of breakdowns (apart from being the kind of tune I love these days, Nomic’s tracks b2b are perfect for that), followed by a ‘steady’ sequence of Hard NRG, without too many big buildups/anthem style melodies – the crowd aren’t really ready for them at 11.30pm, and are just getting warmed up for their dancing. The last 15-20mins was where it got up to 170bpm with some more melodic tracks, and that point especially was where people seemed to get into the set. Up to then the crowd was so thin on the ground it was hard to get much feedback, but I was using one Romancer regular as a reference, and luckily he seemed to keep dancing…

I also tried a few more adventurous mixes this time, especially some very long connections to/from Rx’s Hellfire. It’s been a favourite of Cogi’s for a long time, and I remember him mentioning that it’s a ‘very useful’ tune for creative mixes/connecting parts of a set. He knows what he’s talking about, so I thought I’d give it a try this time. The other one was from Matt England’s Consciousness into Lagash – Consciousness is a really nice tune, but as it was at the ‘get the crowd going’ part of the set I thought I might lose people in the second half of the tune, and so started Lagash as soon as possible, playing them together up to the breakdown.

Here’s a video taken by Eirik, it’s the final part of Android Lime’s Hannya X remix.

Many set-related thanks this time to Re-form, Substanced, Android Lime, Nightforce, DJ Swoosh and DJ Rx. Also huge thanks go to bona fide nice guy Takuya Angel for making my new mask at very short notice. Yet more thanks to the people who came to Cube in time for my set, it makes all the difference to see some familiar faces there – especially to Eirik, Shinosan and also Loki, who arrived earlier than usual, all the way from Nagoya.

After that epic description of what I got up to, sadly we don’t have much (or even any) material from Cogi’s set. It was of course dark psy again, this time starting at 165bpm and going up to 170+. A few tracks were recognisable, but it’s amazing how seamless he can make these sets, just an amazing atmosphere for the whole hour – even if it is hard to dance to high bpm psy for a full 80 minutes (there aren’t many breakdowns, after all). Anyway, top class once again.

Next up were Full Circle DJs, playing UK Hardcore/trancecore at high bpms. Cogi and I were knocked out by this one – apart from really looking like they’re having a good time, Buzzmasta and Yousuke project an aura of ‘we are pro DJs’. There was hardly a single slip during their b2b set, and it doesn’t just come from having the same taste in tunes/mixing, you can see immediately how much experience they’ve had behind the decks. Amazing stuff, and even if I’m not a fan of all the tunes played, it smoothly crossed from bouncy UK hardcore into ancient trancecore, Full Circle tunes and hardcore-influenced drum and bass.

Betwixt & Between used his set as a showcase for his new style, mixed up with some crowd-pleasers from the last year. Opening with CG25, his collab with Teranoid, he also played opkiklo, Decillion catastrophes and Unam sanctum. The crowd went with it from the start, but he also threw in Hesotarou Tankobu, Nemesis and the ever-epic Airwave, among others. Although it wasn’t 100% freeform/NRG this time, taking on industrial hardcore with this much style is very cool indeed.

Here’s another video from Eirik, featuring a slower version of 12 little fragments of silence.

Guld finished off the night with another trademark set – in a way it’s tough to follow Betwixt, as most people have danced themselves into the ground for the last 50 minutes. Credit to Guld then, he builds the atmosphere back up again, to the point where people are going mad during the encore tracks. This time he opened with some slowish NRG, before running through the whole series of Hannya X tracks (excluding Satoshi Honjou’s schranz mix). Here’s a great video from early in the set, taken by Eirik up on the balcony. Watch out especially for Soham with his glow nunchaku (!) over on the right. I don’t know this tune though….anyone have any ideas?

The rest of the set was made up of Guld tunes (Solid State Scouter, Requiem) between the Hannya tracks, before the usual finale of Last of the Mohicans, Almegiddo and Eternal Cannon this time, too. It was a fantastic set, and also featured an ad-hoc dance-off/exhibition by some of the regulars. It’s this kind of thing that makes Romancer such a great event:

Most of us were pretty tired, so after having a rest…

…and persuading the best dancers…

…they showed the rest how it’s done.

So that was the last Romancer of the year. The next one will be in February, probably on a Friday again – thanks again to everyone involved, let’s hope for more of the same in 2010.