I Love Neon New Year's Eve Party

In the past three years, Montreal has come to depend on the Turbo-affiliated I Love Neon crew to keep their ears to the ground and bring in the most sought-after producers of the moment. They may have a habit of riding trends, but they do it better than anyone else. With close to a thousand New Year's revellers packed onto two floors of the vacuous SAT club, one of the city's best venues for electronic music, this was one party raring to get going early on. The evening started with local up-and-comer Jordan Dare on the decks, and by 11:30 p.m. had wound its way to Highfish (aka Marcin Öz), a long-time resident of Berlin's infamous WMF club, who started off his live P.A. set with stripped-down techno and only got harder from thereon in. If it hadn't been for the brief flash upon the screens that 2005 had indeed arrived, no one in the club would've even noticed. The second half of Highfish's set delved into harder acid-techno, which was right where Poker Flat's Steve Bug picked up, continuing the acid revival well into the morning. On any other night over four hours of acid could have grown monotonous for much of the audience, but as the night went on and the party grew increasingly hedonistic, no one seemed to be registering much of anything. Downstairs, Cocosolidciti label-founder DJ Luv spun more experimental beats for those taking a break from the Berlin duo's sonic assault. Although last call came and went, the party kept on going till five in the morning, making it a New Year's well spent for everyone in attendance.