Sublime feat. John '00' Fleming @ Home Nightclub, Sydney (04/07/2008)
Trance fans have been spoilt throughout the summer with so many huge names visiting our shores in the past few months including Armin van Buuren and Tiesto. The international checklist was complete this weekend with John ‘00’ Fleming playing a feature set at Home’s longstanding weekly night Sublime. With a career spanning nearly twenty years, Fleming has become the public face of the psytrance genre, producing numerous mix albums, artist singles, remix projects and now heading his own underground label Joof Recordings.
While known as master of big-room progressive trance throughout the late nineties, in recent years his sound of choice has been strongly influenced strongly by the swirling melodies and tunnelling hypnotic rhythms of the psy-trance scene. These fresh new sounds are showcased monthly in his radio show titled Global Trance Grooves which has developed a loyal following and I definitely recommend checking it out if you haven’t done so yet. The show features some of the biggest and most respected producers as well as many tracks from up and coming artists who send Fleming their material. Fleming has also been a key icon involved in the development of some of the biggest UK super clubs such as Gatecrasher and Cream brands in the late nineties.
We arrived at the club at around midnight and luckily didn’t have to wait too long to get inside, especially now that crisp winter tempatures are setting in. Outside one of the DJs was warming up the crowd in the line just outside the entry playing some nice psy grooves. Inside Patrik Carrera was halfway through his warm-up set in Voodoo main room which was already banging quite hard with a mix of very uplifting tunes and anthems. His set was a bit too hard for a warm up set in my opinion, considering the type of sound Fleming would kick off his set. However before long the main man stepped up to take over where he left off.
Straight from the first detailed intro tune the onslaught of tasty effects and mind blowing atmospheric tracks kicked off. As the first beat dropped the crowd went crazy as the lighting and lasers were let loose in the main room and everyone embarked on the epic 3-hour journey. Inside the main room the dancefloor was fairly full towards the front half of the room but there was plenty of room to move around. The first hour was very full of driving psychedelic sounds while in the second hour there was a heap of good spaced out melodies and feisty uplifting sounds. The final hour Fleming really laid the smack down and delivered some huge jaw dropping tunes! Each one showing off huge basslines and out of this world effects, growls and squeals that develop, twist and morph creating some insane sounds. Some of the tracks he played on the night included The Doppler Effect Beauty Hides in the Deep (Remix), Chemical Brothers Hey Boy Hey Girl remix, Brisky & Digital Nature Excelsior, LSG Netherworld (Oliver Prime Remix) and my favourite Wizzy Noise O Fortuna (remix). The final track of the amazing set was Infected Mushroom’s Deeply Disturbed and the crowd was treated to an awesome new track as a final encore which was lapped up by the crowd. By 4am we had to make a move which coincided with the start of the ultra hard beats on offer to those choosing to stay until the end of the night.
As we took a few excursions to explore the rest of the venue throughout the night and checked out upstairs where Nick Toth was laying down some R’n’B grooves on the terrace. Meanwhile in the Psy.Co Room there some harder edged psy-trance sounds on offer from local legends Raptor, Jaimz and Ben ET. Generally the crowd was quite mixed and there were a number of private functions happening and consequently much of the seating area was reserved until 1am including the balcony area.
Overall, I loved the set from John Fleming and it was great to be treated to 3 hours of solid psychedelic influenced trance. Throughout the entire set Fleming kept a perfect balance between uplifting trance and psytrance, as expected. Fleming’s excellent track selection, super smooth mixing and great attitude behind the decks was immpecable and sets him apart from all the other big names in dance. The Home sound system sounded quite clean and crisp and it seems some improvements have been made. It was great to see so many people jumping around and getting into it adding to the electric atmosphere.
rabithead says...
Joof ftw
Irv1 says...
I'd never been to Home before, or seen J00F, so I was very excited about going to this last week. Here are my thoughts: 1. Lighting::: Way way way too light, I don't want to see everyone, I want it dark and lasery. 2. Sound::: Absolutely shocking!!! Way too quiet - stand near the speakers and all you got was muffled bass, move away and it just wasn't loud enough. There was one decent speaker at the back near the toilets. Very disappointing as I could have dealt with the rest if the sound had been good. 3. Venue::: Small, can't really fault it too much I suppose but it didn't seem to know what it was trying to be. 4. Crowd::: Hardly anyone there, and those that were there insisted on doing that ridiculous 'Melbourne Shuffle' dancing - bouncing around everywhere like Duracell bunnies in an oil slick and getting in my way. 5. DJ::: Good tracks, but train-wrecks all over the place, don't know if he was drunk or what but it was quite painful at times. All in all, extremely disappointing.
Stonkmaster says...
train wrecks?
scottyk82 says...
sublime = sub standard. Alot more people would have gone if it wasn't at subbies. Does anyone know if or when Gas will be re opening? Was where is saw J00F last time, or have the bikies fucked it forever?