On Thursday night the Bacardi Express rolled into town for a big night of bands, booze and more fun than a barrel of monkeys. With its expanses of billboards and the swarms of scantily clad promo girls, the night seemed to be one expensive (and I mean expensive, a fucking Breezer was $9) ad for the spirit, but it didn’t take away from what was a great night of music, thanks mainly to international dance juggernaughts Groove Armada.

Some god awful sound issues could not stop the always excellent Van She kicking off the night in the best possible way. To be honest I’ve never been the biggest fan of these guys. I thought last year’s breakout album V was overproduced and did little to distinguish Van She from the litany of other electro pop bands that are so de rigeur at the moment. But live they are a completely different band.

Instead of glitchy synths and processed beats, the pumping basslines and angular guitarwork of fresher than fresh frontmen Nicky and Matthew lead the way. During their noticeably short set, they played all the crowd favourites, beginning with the euphoric Cat and The Eye and ending with the almost annoyingly catch Kelly. It was short, fast and fucking good.

Bluejuice were up next and they almost topped them. I don’t know why these guys are so much fun to watch, but golly are they fun. When you really think about it their music isn’t anything special. Even big single Vitriol is basic shout and repeat hip hoppy song over loud, droning guitars. But what they lack in musicianship they make up for in stage presence. They came out all dressed in skeleton suits and proceeded to spit water, throw confetti and jump around like an ADD kid on red cordial. Seriously give these guys some ritalin. The whole time they seemed to be having a ball, and once I embraced it, I did too.

The night took a turn for the worse with the arrival of British India. I’ve seriously been thinking about it for days and I can’t work out how this band has a record contract. I mean what is actually good about this band? It’s macho, crotch grabbing faux punk, with ‘intense’ power chords, ‘hardcore’ drumming and whiney, indecipherable singing and it’s just plain terrible. As with Van She, their set was plagued by an inordinate amount of feedback from the monitors. Now normally I’d call it bad engineering but in this case I believe it was the speakers physically rebelling against the band. They sounded guilty that it was coming out of them.

Between sets we were ‘entertained’ by the Hoop DJ’s. I don’t know whether it’s just me or does anyone else hate those groups of hot ‘DJ’s’ who dance around behind the stage and don’t actually do any DJing? Pressing play on a computer is not DJing. Looking hot is not DJing. Asking the crowd if they’re “ready to party” is not DJing. The actual tracks they played, a pedestrian collection of all of last year’s party anthems definitely did not help either.

You know when you have an instantly recognisable logo, you’ve made it as band, and Groove Armada lived up to their billing as some of the best DJ’s in the world. Groove Armada play deep house, but this wasn’t just deep, this shit was subterranean. I could actually see the earth’s core when I was listening to it. The light show was super intense, with lasers and smoke machines worthy of Ibiza. The sound was superb as well, you could physically feel the beats, I thought I was actually having a fucking heart attack. Their ninety minute set, which traversed the electronic musical spectrum from trance, house and disco was nothing short of captivating the whole way through. By the time I left the cavernous Palace Theatre I was sweating, my ears were ringing and I couldn’t get this cheesy smile off my face. It was a great night.

CHECK OUT THE PHOTOS FROM THE SHOW HERE