Sorry for the delay again, but last night I finally got back from Nagoya via sunny Wakayama prefecture. You’ll notice a few videos this time – I decided to get my act together and invest in a camera, so from now on I’ll be trying to film sets wherever I end up (including Tokyo Hardcore Construction this weekend).

Of course the main draws for this event were the Live PA from ConfigSys PROJECT and the DJ set from Fez, but I was also really looking forward to checking out some new DJs and seeing Loki Rinomaria’s set for the first time. He’s a hardcore supporter of NRGetic Romancer (and my sets), so it was the least I could do to get along to this one. Thanks to him for a great night, as well as to the FUNERAL crew who were as friendly a group of ravers as you could hope to meet. Other shouts to hardcore/freeform DJs Taber and Paranoia, DJ AYAYA, and the extremely talented psychadelic artist who was doing some live 3D art during the event (see above). Finally cheers and respect to ConfigSys and Fez, both genuinely nice guys who will hopefully be back in Japan before too long.

With the huge number of DJs/Live PAs, the event actually ran from 9pm to around 6am, and I arrived around 9.30. I didn’t really know what to expect from each artist, but it turned out that Taber is the resident freeform man, playing FINRG with some Betwixt & Between. I only caught the end of his set (and was dancing, so forgot to take any video..), where he played Alek Szahala’s Invitation, Betwixt & Between’s Airwave remix and Raindrops from Nightforce. It’s a shame he was playing so early (and I hinted as much to Loki), but Taber was telling me that the Nagoya crowd don’t quite ‘get’ Finnish freeform yet and the bpm is still a bit too high.

Following a calmer set of slightly psy-style hard dance from RocKEN, KENASON JAHSON (above) appeared in the other DJ booth for his hardcore/gabber Live PA. There were some great tracks in there (not really anything I recognised though), with some twisty synths over the gabber kicks.

AYAYA’s set was energetic hard house with some quite uplifting elements and chunky basslines. The selection was very nice, and was a big hit with ConfigSys. Takashi followed (above), warming up for Fez with some hard trance/hard house tracks. Apparently he played a few tunes that Fez had in mind, but definitely set the crowd up nicely.

DJ Fez was next, playing a great mix of hard house, hard trance and NRG. The video above was the opening track, and things carried on in that style until the second half of the set, where he set things up for ConfigSys with a couple of Android Lime remixes (Hannya X and Hellnight). Technically the set was great too, and impressed a lot of the crowd.

Following Fez was ConfigSys, and his Live PA didn’t disappoint. The bpm was quite a bit higher than I was expecting, and it was great to hear some new material mixed in with classics like Superbeast and Inconsistent. The intro was a bit special too, an epic piano melody that built and built, joined by ConfigSys with some live synth work. Finishing with a fantastic work in progress/just completed track, it was a very pro set that seemed almost perfect for the FUNERAL crowd.

Loki Rinomaria was up next, and he went all out with 160+ bpm Hard NRG. Starting with the DJ X remix of Hannya X (very popular here right now), he ran through a lot of Guld’s recent work. A very nice surprise was the original Nightmare Freak – it fitted Loki’s playstyle really well, and the video above was taken during his own remix of Guld and Betwixt & Between’s Hatral. His performance behind the decks was fantastic, bringing a bit of NRGetic Romancer-style atmosphere to the event, and he even ended on Almegiddo.

After Loki’s set I must admit that I was a bit confused who was playing when, but Paranoia’s set was notable for the retro UK freeform mixing into harder tracks from Alek Szahala (such as Firecloud). The final set of the night was a b2b between Loki and Fez, with hard house and NRG mixing together at ever higher bpms. Things finished with the original Lab 4 Requiem at 170, which you don’t hear too often (but I wasn’t complaining).

A great event then, and quite a bit of variety to the sets. It’s great to see the hard work Loki is putting in, let’s hope the next event in May is as good.