Saturday was my first THC, and it turned out to be a storming event – I was expecting a lot more speedcore/other undanceable genres, but it was mostly dark and nasty gabber, plus Technetium’s slightly incongruous Happy/J-Core. It was probably getting on for 1am by the time I finally arrived, so I’m not sure what was happening in the first couple of hours – but I was just in time for Stanfield’s set, one of the main reasons I was keen to get to this one. Relatively slow for gabber, it was a great set even if there were a few technical problems towards the end. Most of the tracks played were new to me, or I didn’t know the titles, and so Technetium’s set was pretty welcome. It took me back to my brief spell of mixing Tano*C-style Japanese hardcore a few years ago, and I picked up on some RED ALiCE classics, especially.
Of the other DJs, Kanon again played a great hour or so, with really top-class mixing and excellent selection. She played Lunch’s recent Tokyo Hardcore Construction track (heard in the recent promo video), and while I didn’t know many of the tunes, there was a fantastic track around the halfway point with a long female vocal/guitar breakdown, mixed in at just the right moment. Lunch was as good as expected (actually the first time I’ve seen him play live, I think), although I actually missed the changover from him to NDE, through a combination of dancing like a madman and recovering next to the air conditioner. Anyway, they played one of my favourite gabber tunes at some point – featuring the vocal line ‘Clap your hands if you want to die!’, the title escapes me right now…but truly a classic for all the family, that one.
I forgot that THC actually runs until 6am the following day, so this was a long night, even with my late arrival. It’s a great event though, and a few of the NRGetic Romancer crowd also made it along. Next one is January 2009.
There will hopefully be some material from the last NRGetic Romancer to post up before too long (where have I heard that before), and it seems like there were actually a lot of new tracks played, not only from Betwixt & Between.
