I entered The Sanctuary to find all in order, a nice stage at the back with a dance platform in front and speakers placed in the right places. Was this a wild goose chase. Having missed Spinback. Promise, Vinylgroover, Brisk and Jack Frost meant five possible suspects were missing. An informer said they rocked the crowd, perhaps they were innocent?

Hixxy was dropping his usual happy madness, not murder material, well the crowd didn’t think so. Dougal, who is this months winner of ‘hey look at me, I’m a famous DJ who can afford expensive Mayday t-shirts award’, couldn’t hurt a fly and is too popular to be a criminal - I needed to investigate deeper. The video screens gave me no further evidence and the row of scans didn’t shed any light on the subject, unless you were in front of the stage, but was it loud? Believe, it was loud! Slipmatt, Seduction and Ramos were to follow, each played to their own usual high standard, but five consecutive Hardcore DJ’s in a row did start to get on peoples tits, perhaps a bit of Drum & Bass in between would have kept temperatures cooler. It was now time to break out as the aptly named Micky ‘Fabulous’ Finn ripped it up completely as inevitably he would after so much 4 Beat.

All the Jungle-heads came down to celebrate this DJ which made things very busy, although there was still space to do a few cart-wheels at the back. This was good in a way because it provided relief from the madness up front. All this time had passed and I was still no closer to my conclusion. Only one answer, speak to those who know. Magika claimed that he knew nothing. I think Stixman was beyond conversation! That was when I collared Vinylgroover for investigation. I asked him where Freestyle was, he hesitantly answered that he didn’t know, a bead of sweat slid down his forehead. I then questioned him about the spots of blood on his shirt and the ice pick in his record box. He fell to his knees screaming ‘I did it, it was me’. Security bundled him into a police van and that was that. Case solved. I could now party freely. Grooverider had blended in unnoticed and was having it as only he can.

Rumours of attitude led me upstairs. It was pretty jammed up there. This place wasn’t for the yellow coats, well not those who wanted to keep their wallets anyway. Downstairs was more to my taste. Hyper D was on the mic proving that breathing was for wimps as he didn’t pause for breath once!! After standing with a friend between the projector and the screen, causing our silhouettes to be on display to the whole venue, we were informed by a nice security guard that I was forced to wiggle like an epileptic slug to the pounding sound of DJ Vibes, which was as usual, a set of records played in close succession!! It seems, at the moment, if you’re a DJ you must have at least one record in your collection that has your name sampled all over it, preferably followed by the words ‘dub plate’ or VIP or something. Sure as eggs is eggs Easy-D was no exception with his VIP remix of ‘Super Sharp Shooter’ which to say the least went down quite well. Easy-D was tonight’s replacement for Hype - but where was he? Did he follow the same fate as Freestyle? Perhaps that will be my next case! Easy-D was extremely good and a valid replacement for Hype.

DJ Sy broke down barriers with new material, in the morning for the last hour. It was the same all night, a high standard from all DJs. If I had to pick fault with the night I’d have to mention security who could have sorted the queue hoppers out and the upstairs room was in need of supervision. Production wise most things were OK. Perhaps the DJs could have been arranged so that there wasn’t give happy DJs in a row, also all the DJs had 45 minute sets which doesn’t really enable you to get into it. Hour sets with less DJs may have worked better. There was no décor on the ceiling, but who cares anyway. Despite all the bad press I had heard, it didn’t turn out bad at all. It was certainly a lot better than the Pure X - Hysteria event I went to back in October 1994, perhaps this bodes well for future Hysteria events. Get down to the next one and decide for yourself, you might be pleasantly surprised.