Finally it’s time to post a quick review of the last Romancer. With all the guest artists and the ever free 4th floor, it ended up being one of the best for a long time, with a pretty high turnout of ravers from different scenes. Guld put in a huge amount of work for this one, so well done to him, and all of us were pretty busy for the whole night. That means that there might be a few gaps when it comes to photos/video…

Before the event it was great to meet up with Jody 6 again, and we ended up giving Bootek a quick tour of the crazier corners of Harajuku. Bootek was another genuinely nice guy, and it was pretty educational talking to him about the hard dance scene in the UK…the scale of events/what labels get up to is like something from another planet for us here.

Anyway, I was up first again and my set was pretty influenced by my guests/the style of this event. I had 6 or 7 people coming to my set who had never heard freeform before (!), so the idea was to play an ‘introduction to the genre’ set, as well as trying to use sounds that you don’t hear in hard trance/hard house. It seemed to go well, and VX Pasta was kind enough to say that the selection sounded good from the VJ booth. Many guest related thanks then, especially to Chiaki and all her friends, SHINOSAN, Akibakei, Martin and Alabaster, who at the time I didn’t realise had arrived in time for my set, but there he is in the photo above.

My tracklist:

1. Nomic – Walking in the Air (live edit)
2. Nemes & Blender – Inquisition (Blender remix)
3. Nomic – Desolated Dreams
4. Alek Szahala – Voices of Babylon
5. Alek Szahala – Maruuk
6. Alek Szahala – Sunray
7. Vangelis – Rachel’s Song (Grimsoul remix)
8. Cyrez – Private Demon
9. Nightforce – Symphony for the Devil
10. Alek Szahala – Lagash

I know, there’s a lot of Alek in there…but think back to the first time you heard freeform. If you’re anything like me, it’s hard to forget your first Alek track, so I had to play a few this time. I was hoping that hearing the familiar melodies of Walking in the Air and Rachel’s Song would help ease people into the set, too.

(above) Buzzmasta and Yousuke
Next up was Cogi, followed by Full CIrcle DJs, but sadly I was working down at the reception and didn’t see anything of either set. What’s worse, there isn’t any video as far as I know, and just a couple of photos…

Jody 6 played next, and I caught about half of his set. It really went down well with the crowd, a few of whom said it was the best of the night. I was hoping to hear his new remix of Nightmare Freak, but I must have been somewhere else at the time…the parts I heard were as energetic as you’d expect, but seemed a bit harder than his set last July, with some lovely filtered leads amongst the vocal tunes.

Following Jody were Munetica and StripE, who came up with an amazing set. I thought that they might be a bit too trancy to really appeal to the Romancer crowd, but they pitched it perfectly, with the uplifting breakdowns  (including Fighting for Freedom, of course) timed just right, and plenty of harder tunes picking things up where Jody left off. By the way, most people are probably already aware that StripE is also Teranoid – he of the collab tune CG25 – but I had no idea until Betwixt pointed it out that evening.

Betwixt was up after Munetica and StripE, and although some of the crowd had been pulled away by the DJs on the ever free floor he came up with another amazing set. Predictably he started off with CG25, and kept things industrial hardcore for the first half of his 30 minute time slot. After that his more melodic tunes came in, led by the mind-bendingly brilliant Point of No Return – this is no less than my freeform tune of the year so far, I absolutely love it. Following that was Zusammengehorigkeit and Airwave, helpfully killing the crowd before Bootek’s set.

Bootek had been telling me that afternoon that he was planning to play about 145bpm – I was bit worried that it might be too slow for the Romancer crowd, and as his first tune kicked in it seemed to be the case. Full credit to Bootek though, he read the crowd brilliantly and gradually increased the speed while continuing with his three-deck-retro-mashup style. In the second half he really had the crowd going, and the tunes were starting to sound almost schranz-esque. When his set was over, he told me that he had been mixing in extra drumloops under the main tunes to fatten up the sound – really really impressive, and it worked perfectly. Unfortunately he was playing at the same time as Kanon on the ever free floor though, so the harder tunes came too late for some of the Romancer regulars who were keen to hear her set – better coordination on the timetables would have been a good idea, but it was a masterclass for those who were there to see it.

Guld finished off the night, but I was guiding Bootek around Cube and unfortunately didn’t catch too much of it – he made sure to play Android Lime’s thumping remix of Sunray though (one of his favourite tunes of the last few months), and the end of the set was fantastic, including a mashup of Voices of Babylon and Never Forget.

(above) Guld b2b Bootek 

We weren’t sure if the back-to-back with Bootek was going to happen, as he didn’t really have the right tunes for it, but eventually they gave it a try with Bootek pitching some of his tracks way up. To my ears it sounded amazing, with some tunes pushing 170bpm and really hitting the spot with the crowd. They made sure to wrap it up on time though, with Bootek taking the bullet train to Nagoya later that morning (!).

(above) Me, Bootek, Jody 6

And that was the end of another great event – thanks to all the Romancer crew for the hard work this time, and to Jody, Bootek and the ever free folk. Speaking of ever free, here are a couple of videos from Kanon and WILD PARTY on the fourth floor to finish off with.

Thanks to Cogi for the photos, and to Soham and Kaz-B for the video.