måndag 17 Apr 2006, 12:37

After missing them on Boxing day, they were coming back again. Pendulum, the greatest Drum and Base act in the world were coming home to Perth. Although I will admit I'm not part of 'the scene', I was quite looking forward to seeing some of the local Drum and Base acts, as well as London Elektricity.

Just a note about the venue for those not from Perth. Metro City is the biggest dance music venue in Northbridge, the main nightlife area of Perth. A lot of people think that it is a fantastic venue to have raves at. Personally though I think it lacks soul, as everything seems just too polished, just too clean. I think this stems from that fact that the primary use of the venue is as a nightclub and NOT as a venue for raves.
There is one thing it does have going for it though: it has about 4 levels of balconies overlooking the main stage, so not only can you always find somewhere to watch the show if you want to see the stage, but (from what I've heard) it lets the performers connect with the crowd better, because they can see people all around them, not just below them.

My girlfriend, some friends and myself arrived at 10pm, and went straight to the main stage. Rintel, one of the local D'n'B acts was playing. They had a couple of good moments, but in general they were not doing that well. Maybe it was the MC (not a big fan of MCs unless they are really good), maybe it was because I'm a trance kid a heart, but they were not all that good.

So we headed up to the platinum bar (the breaks room) to find another local act, Nyquist Freqs playing. I must say that although this area had the atmosphere of an airport bar, I was having a much better time here than on the main stage. From here we could see out the front of the niteclub and I saw a few of my friends in line. I waved to them as they walked in (we were on a level above them), and after they came up to meet us we went to the main stage to ready for London Elektricity.

The London Elektricity was a DJ set being played by Tony Coleman and M.C.ed by MC Werc. They played a good set, the two highlights for me being when they played The Strangest Secret In The World, and a remix of Touch The Sky. Werc's MCing was pretty good and he managed to play to the crowd quite well. All in all the perfect prelude to what was about to come.

Then at 1:30 came the moment we had all been waiting for, and what can I say. Pendulum played the most Awesome Drum and Base sets I've ever heard. They played most of their best stuff from Hold Your Colour, Including Slam, Fasten Your Seatbelt, and my favourite track of theirs Hold Your Colour (I was quite supprised they didn't play Turrantula though). They also mixed in a lot of other tracks, including Voodooo People, No Good, and Killing In The Name Of. All of this worked flawlessley with excellent MCing, and a MASSIVE pyrotechnics display at the baegining (although it would have been good to see them finish with that as well). All in all the best Drum and Base set I've ever seen.

After this my girlfriend left the dancefloor. We went upstairs to have a bit of a rest from dancing. After while we realised that although Shy FX may have been playing a good set, we could not get over the Annoying MCing of MC Skibadee (e.g. "Thank you Very Much for being a Raver, Thank you very much thankyou very very very much"). So we decided to leave. We figured that since there would only be one more act after Shy FX, it was not worth sitting through, and we had come to see what we wanted to anyway. We kind of forgot however that three was a breaks room, and we could have gone there for a look. I was actually a little interested to see Space DJz, who were playing in the breaks room, but sine their set coincide with Pendulum I didn't bother.

I have deliberately avoided the subject of the faked tickets/overselling tickets because that is being covered on so many other websites (here for example). But if anyone knows exactly what is happening with the second performance let me know.

All in all I had a fantastic night, and I will be there next time Pendulum are back in Perth.