The hard house scene in the north of England, and in Leeds in particular, has long had a great reputation. London is perhaps so saturated with nights and big names that the punters perhaps take it for granted and can’t muster the excitement that the music deserves. But in other places, a hard house night is something really special; it’s a MASSIVE event, we get excited and look forward to it for weeks, we dress up, we travel for miles to the club, and when we get there we get LUVDUP, SMILE, DANCE (!) and GO MENTAL….


Party time!

For this special event at Hi Oktane, Leeds, a club with a top top reputation amongst those who like their hard house and want to dance to the latest sounds, a group of us traveled over 200 miles to get there – but it was well worth it.

It was a great night! A TOP QUALITY line up – it just doesn’t get much better – a lovely club, a warm friendly atmosphere, enthusiastic clubbers, and the best music around today…

Young prodigy Tom Parr kicked the night off. What with the traffic on the motorway, we only caught the end of his set, however, which included Chris Comben’s excellent ‘Body movin’. Next up was another whippersnapper with a talent belying his years, Frank Farrell. So many top tracks to mention here, but some of his more outstanding tunes were the wonderful singalong ‘Ultra-camp’ (‘Stay with me’, Dustbin Barrell), written for Justin Bourne’s swansong, ‘Mushy rumours’ (Superfast Oz & Frank) and (unless in my state of excitement I imagined it) ‘Progressive Llama’ (Tinrib & RR Fierce).

The music stopped briefly at that point to make the break to Ilogic’s set, which was quite a different musical style to Frank’s: a more spare, punchy, almost bouncy rhythm kicked the set off. We were treated to new versions of tracks that evoked the joy of recognition: Ilogic’s remix of Rodi Style’s ‘Burn it’, and Adam M’s blitzing version of Diddy ‘Give me love’. Ilogic is also one of the few hard house DJs who can get away with scratching in a way that enhances rather than distracts from the mix.

Mr FlashPoint Marc Johnson’s set was one of FlashPoint classics (including one or two recent hits, such as ‘Blunt force’). Some of the tracks that stood out for me were his and DIP’s remix of OD404 ‘Biofilter’, ‘Great responsibility’ (JB remix), Jupe’s ‘Negotiation’ (Defective Audio remix), ‘Release the freak’, ‘Etherwave’ (MJ remix of Gary Cooke and Frank Farrell)… I could go on and on (and usually do)… This short and sweet set was probably the best of the night as a constructed cohesive set. The sets that followed were musically brilliant, interesting and exciting in their own way, but, as back-to-backs, can’t really be compared with a normal set…

The star billing of the night was a real exclusive. For the first time, two of the true titans of hard house studio work were face to face and back to back. We were all fascinated to see the leading talent in the scene today, Dom Sweeten (aka Defective Audio, Base Graffiti, and one half of OD404) b2b with Mik Cree (aka Dynamic Intervention), one of the most experienced, original and influential engineers/producers in the history of the scene. With so much excitement, there was on obvious danger of expecting too much and being a little disappointed. But, for me, with my slight misgivings about the inevitable constraints of b2bs, this set actually exceeded my high expectations. It was the first time I had seen Mik Cree and I have to say he was completely awesome and played the best music of the night. Stunning, absorbing, perfect hard house dance music. Dom displayed the range of his talents with a slightly broader range of musical styles, but all quality, non-stop dance. Altogether the set worked, was utterly compelling and of the highest quality. I couldn’t name (or remember) most of the tracks but I do recall Mik dropping his remix of 2Slags ‘Restless’ and a really solid remix of ‘Time to burn’… The only shame was that this much anticipated meeting of these two giants only lasted an hour! Next time please give them two hours together you promoters out there!


Dom at the decks (and Mik’s back)

Up next was Hi Oktane promoter Adam M b2b with everyone’s current favourite up and coming studio engineer (and brilliant producer in his own right) Turtledog’s Dave Owens. Of course they played the track they wrote together, ‘Tango’ (a beautiful construction), as well as the ‘if all else fails’ hard house classic ‘Rock da spot’ (well it works for me every time!) and of course Adam’s simply stunning booty of TDV ‘Are you all ready’ – surely as good a track as any produced anywhere by anyone in the last 12 months.


Two very hard but tuneful young men :o)

After these three stunning sets, I must admit my body was starting to flag, but FlashPoint’s Dave Curtis and Jupe’s set drove me on with a combination of FlashPointers, fresh new unreleased future hits and classics: ‘Heavy bass’ (Dave Owens remix), ‘Weekender’, ‘Submission’ (hot fuzz remix), ‘I don’t care’ (oh yes!), and ‘Yamamba’. They encored with ‘99.9’, stepping up the BPM to carry us on to the end of a great night.

All top music then. But it was also the people that made the night. Thanks to Adam M for putting together such a top night, for hosting the FlashPoint birthday, for the birthday banners and décor, and for embarrassing Marc with a birthday cake :o) It was lovely to meet some of the friendly, sexy Leeds crowd. And it was great to travel more than 200 miles and still find fellow clubber buddies I already knew: hi to DaveSoCool and gorgeous Cheeky Cara, who was playing some sexy house in the Funk Deluxe room upstairs. And of course it was nice that so many fellow FlashPointees had made the long trip like we did and felt, like me, it was well worth it: hi to Lucy (Panda-loves-teddy) and Vidal, Emma, Spammy, Ryan of course, Irish Dave and Anna, as well as to my FlashPoint traveling companions Marc (cheers mate!), Dave, Sarah (Crampo) and Jupe…


Shiny happy people :o)

Hi Oktane = highest quality hardhouse clubbing. Try the Leeds experience and discover it for yourself…..!
:o)

Sums up the night perfectly!

Thanks for a great review John and hope you made the rest of your journey ok.

Thanks Adam and Simon for a brilliant night - you are a stars!

It always amazes me how well u manage to sum up the night!!! :) Good to see you!

good work nutter! see you saturday mate.


hi cara, nice to meet you! x

buds in!

Wicked night spent with top people, lovely jubbly!! :0)

Great review John

Looks like a good little shindig, nicely done!

All good.

wicked review mate, sums it up perfectly. :0)

so so so pissed off i missed this! i hate bein a student! as fun as a life it is its so hard bein skint!

the really annoyin thing is i missed it twice, cos i thought it was on last month! fukin numpty!! :(

Ace review mate =]

i had an excellent night. quality tunes start to finish for me