Live Review: Hannah Wants, DJ Micah, Bazil Zemplys, Pussymittens, Drifter

4 February 2014 | 11:11 am | Josie McGraw

For the kids that switched to espresso martinis, Pussymittens & Drifter brought up the caboose and continued the party into wee hours of the night.

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After locking in Friday nights exclusively with touring DJs, Parker's new image seems to have been adopted by Perthies. Even as fashionably late as most clubgoers attempt to be, a small but eager crowd was hovering in and around the club fairly early in the evening.

Bazil Zemplys opened the night with grooveable four/four tracks. Although there was not a soul on the dance floor, the combination of swish décor and glossy house music offered a welcoming atmosphere resembling a high-end liquor ad. It made you immediately thirsty for chilled Russian vodka.

One of Perth's leading Breakbeat DJs, DJ Micah took the vacant dance floor, now sparsely populated with comically awkward solos, and transformed it into a space heaving with enthusiastic ravers. Girls in skin-tight dresses and un-walkable heels were getting sexy adjacent to die-hard house fans throwing down heavily rehearsed dance moves. The place was packed, the floor was slick with spilt drinks and the willingness to get loose was thick in the air. The party had definitely started.

As the forefront of the new bassline revival scene, Hannah Wants entered stage left with a cheer from the crowd. She started strong and grimy with a mix of Wildchild's Renegade Master that could have easily compromised the structure of the building. In other words, it was heavy. Energy was still high when she led into a bass-saturated version of Lana Del Ray's Summer Sadness. With her head bobbing to the respective beat, Hannah worked in a well received, Storm Queen's Look Right Through – again, absolutely sick with bass. People loved it; some were literally pawing at the LED screens that enveloped the DJ booth.

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But somewhere in the middle of the set, the uptempo anthems drifted off between bass drops, replaced by less crowd-pleasing tracks. The large hard-hitting bass drops seemed all that carried the audience through. The lulls had people lingering, which created an inconsistent dance floor with the diehards meandering to the sidelines. Although the floor was still relatively full, it was populated by a juxtaposition of shoegazing followed by celebratory hands raised to the roof. Good but not great. For the kids that switched to espresso martinis, Pussymittens & Drifter brought up the caboose and continued the party into wee hours of the night.