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HSU Events: Knockout Circuz 2015 and the history of HSU

By: Nicki Ranger

Knockout Circuz 2015 is just a couple of weeks away!

If you live in Australia, you’d already be well aware of this and probably doing a happy dance just thinking about it! If you’re not aware about the shenanigans going down on Saturday, the 12th of December, then I suggest that you read on and get excited for us!

Let’s start on a high note – “HSU Presents: Knockout Circuz” features the long awaited, highly anticipated reunion of Code Black and Audiofreq as Bioweapon! The duo has recently been back in the studio together, working on a collection of new tracks and we can’t wait to hear what they have lined up for this exclusive event.

So, who else is playing? Technoboy (90 minute classics set!), Wasted Penguinz, Code Black, Audiofreq, Tha Playah, Toneshifterz and Darren Styles, are programmed to perform inside one of Sydney’s iconic venues – the Horden Pavillion.

Knockout Circuz comes at the end of an incredibly successful year for promoters HSU Events. As yet another killer event approaches sell-out status let’s take a look back at the history of HSU….

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From a night in a basement bar on Sydney’s Oxford Street to becoming one of Australia’s largest dance music event promoters, in just 6 years HSU (Harder Styles United) has become a truly dominant force in the hard dance scene down under.

On Friday 2nd October 2009, HSU opened its doors at The Gaff on Oxford Street for the very first time as harder styles fanatics from every corner of Sydney flocked to the event. In an era when independent events would come and go with varying degrees of success, HSU found a winning formula and absolutely nailed it from day one. Boasting rapidly rising stars Toneshifterz and Bioweapon as regulars, HSU always brought a heavyweight line up of local talent with a typical night featuring artists such as SDee, Nik Fish, Matrix, Nitrouz, Nomad and the creator of HSU, Kid Finley.

HSU’s policy was always to be an inclusive club for all harder styles but in keeping with the tastes of the crowd at that time hardstyle was the primary order of the day, with maybe a hard trance set early in the night and a hardcore set near the end. One genre that never slipped off the HSU agenda was UK hardcore, the sound that set the foundations of our rave scene. Virtually every edition of HSU featured a UK hardcore set, from well known Sydney names such as Weaver, Suae and Haze. I mean, c’mon, everyone loves a bit of UK hardcore now and again! (Actually, it’s not so popular among the Dutch, but Australia still loves it).

The HSU CD, which was given out upon entry to the event, became an essential part of the monthly HSU experience. I’ve still got the original CD and it’s still the soundtrack to pre-drinks before any HSU event.

Another essential part of the monthly HSU experience was getting caught in the rain! No matter what the season, there would always be rain on HSU night.

Once inside the front door of The Gaff, the queue would lead down a narrow staircase into the brick walled basement club. On the sunken dance floor, the different tribes of harder styles fans were easy to spot; the kandi ravers, the shufflers in phatties and the lads in Nikes and polo shirts. At the bar, the HSU signature drink was the $5 Jagerbomb. My best friend and I always found that we’d end up a special kind of drunk at HSU, always just the right amount of drunk that made the whole night (and us) extra-special-freaking-awesome. When music, alcohol and atmosphere combine like that, we say we are “in the HSU zone.”

With the amazing success of the monthly events it only took a few months before the first international DJ graced the decks of HSU – Scope DJ at the fourth edition of HSU in February 2010. Scope DJ had last been in town less than a year earlier playing at The Sounds of Q-Dance at the Horden Pavillion to a crowd of several thousand and at this illustrious HSU event, we had the honour to witness Scope DJ playing an intimate nightclub set.

In October 2010, for HSU’s first birthday, HSU brought us Dutch Master, which was certainly one of my favourite nights at HSU. Other international guests in HSU’s time at The Gaff included Flarup and Psyko Punkz.

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Boxing Day 2010 saw the first event under the Knockout brand – a night of b2b DJ battles at The Gaff. Just over a year later and – BOOM! In January 2012 Knockout took over The Metro for HSU’s first large scale venue event, featuring B-Front, Zatox and Tha Playah. My personal stand out memory of that night was the internationals being fantastic, of course, but my favourite set of that night was upcoming Australian duo Dillytek. The pair played on the main stage at around midnight and they absolutely owned it. You could tell right then that they would be Australia’s next big international hardstyle prodigies.

HSU was back at The Metro again in June 2012 with Technoboy and Pavo; the same month HSU also brought a considerably smaller event – “I Am Legend featuring Tommyknocker.” After a last minute venue change and promoter Pete (Kid) Finley ending up in hospital hours prior to the event, the party took place at the club up the top of all those damn stairs above The Empire in Kings Cross (even I can’t remember the name of the place). What I do remember is that amongst a sometimes agro hardcore crowd, there was me somewhere down the front, stomping away with a massive smile on my face just thinking “fuck yeah, hardcore!”

The HSU juggernaut rolled on around town with Knockout at Home Nightclub (January 2013), Technoboy at The Metro (October 2013) and Zatox at The Metro (December 2013) before landing at The Big Top Luna Park in July 2014 for Knockout, an event that sported A-list names such as Angerfist, Ran-D, Outblast, Omegatypez and more.

Knockout Circuz, held in December 2014 and again at The Big Top, featured the biggest line up yet, including Psyko Punkz, Minus Militia, Crypsis, Anime, Mad Dog, D-Block & S-te-Fan and Darren Styles among more. Yes, Darren Styles, the god of the happy sounds of UK hardcore! At what was surely meant to be a very serious and hard as fuck music event, Darren Styles treated us to not one, but two sets – classics and upfront. The crowd went bananas and UK hardcore was well and truly back at HSU.

In April 2015 HSU was on the move again, to an enormous arena at the Sydney Showgrounds for Midnight Mafia – the biggest HSU event to date, with an insanely good line up including Tatanka, Da Tweekaz, TNT, Stephanie, Angerfist, Miss K8, Hixxy and Headhunterz, in what was probably his last appearance in Australia as a hardstyle artist. The first full overnight arena event in the scene for several years, Midnight Mafia was a whole new experience for younger ravers and inspired many semi-retired hardstyle ravers to attend “once more, for old times sake”. Check out the official Midnight Mafia aftermovie here and Alive At Night’s review of the event here to understand just how amazing this event was.

Keeping the momentum up HSU returned to the same venue in July for another all nighter, Shadows of Wonderland, with a mainly raw hardstyle focused line up including Gunz For Hire and B-Front, plus Tommyknocker representing hardcore and Scott Brown for a UK hardcore set.

This brings us back to present day and the countdown to Knockout Circuz 2015 – see you at the Horden Pavillion on Saturday 12th December!

Knockout Circuz 2015 Facebook Event

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