I’m not too sure when photos from last weekend’s Sabbath will be appearing, but this promo video (completed just a day or so ago) does an awesome job of conveying the atmosphere of the event. It has to be one of the very best I’ve ever played at, with an incredible crowd of underground characters who seemed ready to dance to just about any genre that was thrown at them. Huge thanks once again to ac-key and Siki for giving me the chance to appear at such an amazing event, but also to KANGU, Kohaku and the rest of the ravers for support, as well as to Alexis, Selia and the Decadance Bar staff.

The genres were far more varied than I was expecting, and both ac-key and Siki played two sets each. Siki’s first was a warm up, with some gentle psy and industrial, followed by ac-key’s jungle, dubstep and hard techno. For one reason or another RYO was very delayed, so Shou somehow fitted in a rock/metal set before starting his painting. After my set, Siki played some high bpm dark psy, and RYO finally appeared to play a brief session of hardcore-with-guitars. ac-key finished off the event with a great set of breakbeats and some more uplifting tunes.

After describing my style as ‘aggressive and melancholy’ on the flyer, I really tried to go all-out in that direction. By some miracle it ended up being one of my best-ever sets, and probably as close as I’ve ever gotten to what I think NRG/freeform should ‘really’ sound like. There weren’t many promos this time, partly because of the dark/melancholy drought we’re having these days, but also because I guessed that even the classics would be new to a lot of the crowd. Here’s the tracklist, then:

01. Stereo Junks – Chemistry (Proteus remix)
02. Epyx & Cyrez – Risk Addiction (Substanced remix)
03. Beati Mortui – Let the Funeral Begin (Proteus remix)
04. Alek Szahala – Sunray
05. FEN Project – Mad Man
06. Proteus – I See Things That You Don’t See (Guld remix)
07. Hase – Brionac [unfinished]
08. Alek Szahala – Maruuk
09. Alek Szahala – Voices of Babylon
10. Betwixt & Between – Zusammengehorigkeit
11. E-Noid – Order Chaos
12. Epyx & Cyrez – The Most Masochist
13. Epyx & Cyrez – When Left Alone
14. Dye In Sound – The Storyteller
15. Alek Szahala – Last of the Mohicans
16. RR-ThermalForce – Al Megiddo

The intro was supposed to ease the crowd into things with some guitars/goth style, while I tried to use Alek at certain points in the set to freshen things up and introduce some melodies (without ever getting into ‘trancy’ territory, of course). As luck would have it, the Let the Funeral Begin>Sunray connection was my best mix for months, so I’ll definitely be using that in a future studio set, and the extremely dark sequence from Zusammengehorigkeit to The Storyteller went down far better than I could have hoped…just a shame that I couldn’t fit Nomic’s Marilyn Manson remix in at the end. Anyway, Shou’s painting began during my set, and the atmosphere was just fantastic – watching the crowd go mad to When Left Alone while TSUMUGI did her thing next to the speaker was amazing, and right up there among my ‘best DJ moments’ so far.

I was lucky enough to make a few contacts during the night, so hopefully there’ll be more chances to get involved with this scene in the future. Next stop, Tokyo Decadance on the 24th…