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Submitted by Shannon on 16th June, 01:01AM

WSS was the most ambitious festival in Melbourne since 2 Tribes, with trance, house and techno covering 7 stages spread across the whole Melbourne Park complex. For the most part it was a raving success, and I spent the night surrounded by happy 'up-for-it' party people. It's often said Music is all about bringing people together and you only had to spend a bit of time in Rod Raver or Hisense to see that this was accomplished in spades.

I arrived just after 11pm in time to see Rollin Connection, or so I thought but spent the better part of an hour in line waiting with about 10,000 people. There was a massive police presence so it felt very safe and I can't say I witnessed any typical drunken antisocial behaviour, and then all of a sudden we were inside... After spending so long cooped up in a crowd, feeling like cattle it was nice to walk into the Renaissance room and see Phil K playing to a smallish crowd. Perfect way to start the night off too, with some twisted down tempo stuff.

Shortly after 1am I wandered into the massive hisense/vodafone arena where Armin van Buuren was doing what he does best, trance for the masses. The place was PACKED and it took about half an hour to get to a spot 3 levels up where we could see and weren't in a spot where we felt like cattle. This arena seemed like the party capital with Armin flowing between melodic uplifting trance (you know the type, big breakdown with girly vocals then dropping a big catchy riff) and some more driving techier sounding trance and even the occasional farty bassline. I'm no trance connoisseur but I love a good party and Armin delivered except for a tiny sound outage which the crowd cheered. Seems weird to cheer a sound outage but I guess ravers are an excitable bunch Armin played out of what looked like a technicolour tipped over windmill and the there were lazors and flashing lights aplenty. Not sure about the stage dancers though, weird androgynous clowns and girls on stilts wobbling around like they're drunk at Mardi Gras, didn't seem to really add to the overall vibe except to confuse a lot of people. Nowhere had future mentioned a clown/circus theme beforehand, or at least not as far as I was aware.

After wandering around a few times for drinks and to meet friends someone pointed out to me that it was time for Guy Gerber in the Likes Of You room... I suddenly realised time had gotten away from me and I'd missed James Zabiela. Annoyed, I talked my trance loving friends into checking out Gerber and DAMN! What a set. He really had the crowd going with some funky as hell tech and tech-house numbers and then right at the end he dropped 'Smoothe Operator'... Wouldn't miss Gerber if he ever makes it back here, definitely knows how to rock a party. Popof picked up the pieces after Gerber and was playing some great upbeat tech and the room was filling up when they shut the stage down after just half an hour. It left the crowd scratching their heads for a while not sure if he was coming back on but alas the stage was shut down an hour early. Devastated... On our way out I ran into friends that said the Renaissance room had been shut down as well and we were being funnelled into the 2 main arenas.

Ventured into Rod laver for the first time of the evening to see Chris Lake and thought the lighting and stage design was awesome... However the sound quality was much better in the trance arena. Spent half an hour or so wishing I was listening to Popof or Sean Quinn and then left.

Great festival dampened by early closing side-rooms. Definitely felt sorry for the crowd that had paid to see Popof and only got 30 minutes and also for the potential crowd that might've seen the local veteran Sean Quinn and experienced something outside their 'comfort-zone'.Overall it was professionally run, there was a great vibe all night, a decent variety of music and I look forward to the next one

By Mathew Phipps