Frantic 4th Birthday - 23.4.2004

Hands up if you've ever been to London-

I am guessing that a fair few people out there in Melbourne clubland are in the same boat as me, and have made the great pilgrimage to the clubbing
Mecca of London at some stage during their lives.

Most people develop something of a love-hate relationship with London while they are there - it's dirty, overcrowded, expensive, and unfriendly and it
rains constantly. On the flip-side, I have never been to a city that has better nightlife than London, and I have happily whittled away many, many
weekends inside the likes of The Fridge, Camden Palace, Heaven and Turnmills.

Frantic in London is a clubbing institution. It was running the whole time I was there, and very few months ever went by without at least one Saturday
night pilgrimage to The Palace for Frantic. Steve Hill is as much an institution as Frantic - I have lost count of the number of times I have
seen him play and every time, he never fails to deliver a relentless string of anthemic hard dance tunes, each one seemingly more energetic, more
uplifting and more... well... frantic than the one before!

Unsurprisingly, I jumped at the chance to go to the 4th birthday of Frantic in Melbourne, to see Steve Hill play once again and perchance re-live some
of those bad old days in London. Over the past four years, it would seem that Frantic in Melbourne has risen to become almost as much of an institution as it's London counterpart - they have bought over many London staples like Phil Reynolds and Nick Sentience as well as booking some of the best local talent to rock the dance-floor.

We arrived sometime after midnight, which meant that unfortunately we missed out on seeing the first couple of DJ's play in the main room, but
from what I could tell, they did a great job of warming the crowd up, because the main dance-floor was already approaching capacity. Sax was
doing such a great job of preparing the crowd for Steve Hill's aural assault it was almost a shame when he handed over the headphones to Steve
at 3 am... Almost...

Steve Hills set was exactly what I had come to hear, tune after tune after tune of classics and floor-fillers. He opened with a dirty bootleg of
Ferry Corsten's "PUNK", and followed that swiftly with one of his own classics, "MY LOVIN'". It was the perfect start to a brilliant set of hard
dance anthems. Other highlights included a remix of CARTE BLANCHE and a heap of new tunes that would no doubt have just come out of Mr Bishi's Studio!

The venue itself packed out nicely, with some room left for dancing in front of the DJ booth and plenty of places to sit and chill. Not that I spent any time chilling out over the course of the night, I found it impossible to drag myself away from the main floor for more than 5 minutes at a time!

At the end of the night my friends and I were all in agreement - Frantic's 4th birthday was an amazing night by all accounts; probably the best night
out I have ever had in Melbourne! My hat goes off to the DJ's and the promoters for creating such a top-class event - but it has to be said, the best thing about Frantic was the crowd. Everyone there was ultra-friendly and up-for-it, and I was amazed to find that loads of people I knew from London were there. I left the club with my phone stuffed full of numbers from old friends I had lost touch with, and new friends I had met over the course of the night.

See you all at the next one! :)
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