Good things don’t come easy and putting together JACK this Friday certainly wasn’t easy. Our both guest DJs (Jody Wisternoff and Lil’ Tony) had to cancel due sickness, half of our lights were mysteriously not working and an hour before opening the place looked like a mess but at the end it turned out to be one of the best Jack events ever. The night was sold out soon after midnite (people getting in only when someone left) and we made our record crowd at Kuudes Linja. Probably there could have been couple people less in but I still prefer full clubs over empty ones at the end.

Replacement of Jody – Mr.A aka Sven Väth of Helsinki – was on top form (when isn’t he?) and I enjoyed a lot playing the whole night with him. Jack is ment to be an openminded playground of music where house is the main theme and deep house, tech house, progressive, nu skool breakz, techno and odd classic or two can be heard. Pushing the envelope, trying new things and keeping the music fresh. Playing a jackin’ set after quite some time was a lot of fun while some personal musical highlights were Joris Voorn’s ‘Dark Flower’ remix, Radio Slave’s ‘Eyes Wide Open’, Timo Maas’ ‘Subtellite’, Len Faki’s ‘Death By House’ and DJ DLG & Morillo’s ‘Where Are You Now?’. Big tracks yes I know:) Full tracklists to my both sets are in the tracklistings section of my site. LJs Tea & Severi did their magic with visuals and mood of the night was flowing nicely from comfy socializing to full on rave blast.

Friday partying (especially in Kallio) seems to be hard and sometimes after 2am the level of hedonism is quite high to me too… So it’s nice that JACK is now moving to Saturdays when starting on every third Saturday of every second month next year. That’s easy to remember isn’t it?? The opening night at Redrum is on January 17th 2009 with an all stars line up of newer generation of Helsinki house DJs with Juju, Niko Geselle, Lionel Tiger, Tony Profondo and Casper playing alongside myself. Jack has always supported the nu breed of DJs and the tradition will continue at Redrum even if we’ll have some high profile guests too… JACK is back!

PS. FYI for those not living in Finland/Helsinki and not familiar with the Jack concept: it is my occasional house night running since early this decade. I still play mainly trance and progressive house on most of my gigs:) I’ve been into progressive house since the early 90s when labels like Limbo and Guerilla were ruling and first Renaissance CDs came out. We even ran one of the first (illegal) progressive house clubs in Helsinki called ‘Q’ in Kruunuhaka back in 1993. So it’s no new thing to go a bit housey too sometimes.