A few years ago The Void was the regular home of North but the event left this venue over a year ago. Here was North's return to The Void and was also the event's Christmas party. I arrived at the venue just after 9pm when the event was scheduled to start and found a pretty big queue outside. The queue didn't start moving until 9:30 and then didn't seem to move that fast, so it took me 45 minutes to reach the front entrance. I was given a pretty thorough search by a security guard who even asked me to take the back cover off my mobile phone and show him the battery. I then went off to check out the venue. On the ground floor level was the second room which was host to the Radical hard trance arena. This was quite a plush room which had purple drapes on the ceiling and lots of small glitter balls attached to it on sticks. There were some tables at the back of the room and a bar in there too. This room was the smaller of the two and was very busy all night long. There was a merchandise stall selling lots of different North items including tapepacks and this was also on the ground floor level. Going down some stairs led to the second arena which was the bigger of the two. This was the Technology hard techno arena and this arena was much more of a "rave" style arena than the second room. The DJ was at the front of the room at quite a high level and there were green lasers and a smoke machine in the arena. There was a dance platform in the middle of the arena and at the front were video screens. These were showing a variety of video clips which bizarrely included footage of US trailer-park types brawling with each other as crowds of people watched them. The sound system in this arena was very loud, although towards the end of the night the bass on it was distorting quite a bit. The first set I saw was Birkenhead's Tugie playing in the main hard techno arena. He did a good set which was quite twisted and included some impressive scratching at gabba speed. He's one of the younger new breed of gabba DJs and is one to watch for in future. After him came Drokz from Holland who played a set which was nothing short of ferocious. It was very fast and hard, and the crowd were loving it. I then headed upstairs to check out the second arena where Mark EG was on the decks. He surprised me by playing a quite groovy and relatively laidback techno set which I really enjoyed hearing. The crowd were chanting his name as always, showing the kind of following he has at North. After him came promoter Vortex playing back to back with Jon Connor. They sped up the tempo a bit after Mark EG, playing a good 90 minute techno set. Next I headed back downstairs to the gabba arena to catch some of Dolphin playing back to back with The Teknoist. They did a varied set which mixed it up between faster and slower stuff, and played the older "No more rock and roll" tune. I then went back upstairs to see Sharkey play in the Radical arena. He started off with the hard house tune "Casa Del Diablo" by Don Diablo and also played the anthem "Hands Up" by Arome. For the final set of the night I was going to see Scorpio back to back with Producer in the main arena. I saw about half of their set which also had Sharkey on the mic, but the sound system seemed to be distorting quite badly so I went back upstairs. M Zone was playing the final set of the night there and played a good hard trance set which included "Only Kicks". There were lots of things I liked about this night but I think the main one was the amount of people they got in. The second arena was rammed all night, the main gabba arena was also busy, and I don't think the venue was that far from capacity. It seemed to me like the event had lured out all of the people who used to go here at The Void, as well as others from further afield. The atmosphere was really good especially in the gabba arena where it was mental and blatantly full of pure gabba fans. The production was good and as always at North the music was fresh and much different to what you'd hear played at other raves. I thought Drokz played the best set in the Technology arena and Sharkey was the best in the upstairs Radical arena. The only criticism I can think of it that it would be nice to have a 6am finish instead of 4am. North is back here at The Void again on Valentines day which falls on a Friday, and if they can get this many people in on a regular basis then North is going to become a real force to be reckoned with. See you all there. :) Shouts to Lee UHF, Nicky Technohead, pski the very soon to be mother, Sandy, Mick, Michael, Thumpa, Sawyer, Hiney, Taff, John, Rob Brownlee, Matt Technohead, Martin, Teknoraver, Teknobabe and Sharkey.
