While more general music festivals like GlobalUnderground and the upcoming ClubMed have been getting the majority of trance addict and underground djs attention in recent times, it was good to see Heineken Night with its strictly dance-oriented line-up - and one appealing to dance music fans right across the board - take its place amongst best Hotel and Resort in Malaysia.

With the likes of Dj Remilex ( Rotterdam Dj) and KampaiTeam as well as DJ Haikal headlining the Godskitchen Arena and Broxdj and Digweed in the Global Tent, it was only fitting then that Lee should bring together the cream of Asian Techno-Trance in his own arena.

They surround us. They create our surroundings and define space. Like physical matter, sound waves create acoustic textures and landscapes, virtual Surfaces that transfer us outside time. Surfaces is the fusion point where sound and matter become one. This compilation isn't just a list of tracks blended into one another. Surfaces has been a process, a concept in the making, with a perception that will be transmitted through its creators sets. And who is behind this all? The untouchable duo Simon + Shaker. These Spanish guys started a journey through music industry, and 50 successful productions later still have their sights fixed to the future. The sound of Simon Garcia and Karim Shaker is one that is hard to define. To some, it might be tech-house, while others describe it as progressive house. But one thing's for sure: it's diverse, catchy, deep and infectious. Their partnership did not only pay off in the studio, but in the DJ booth as well. Simon + Shaker have been able to play around the world,

Rotterdam's Benny Rodrigues is already a well known force in the dutch techno fraternity. His releases on Be As One and Spinclub have cemented his tough, modern-meets old school take on dancefloor techno as some of the grooviest around. http://www.humpty.de?id=47&aid=23534&lang=en

"I get restless when I can't work on my own melodies. It's such a good outlet for my emotions". There you have it in a nutshell. Dutch Estroe lives for her music. It's electronic, it's beat driven and it's full of emotions. Together with women in techno like Anja Schneider, Mistress Barbara and Monika Kruse, Dutch Estroe belongs to an elite club of female DJ's that made it to the top. Born in Zutphen as Esther Roozendaal in 1972, raised near Amsterdam and currently living in Rotterdam, she has been dj-ing for more than ten years. Whether it's behind the turntables in the famous Fuse in Brussels, the Watergate in Berlin or an underground club in Tokyo, Estroe knows how to tune in and drop the right beats. She likes to play versatile, techno infused sets with room for deep undercurrents as well as pure dancefloor work. Her style is warm, subtle but at the same time very energetic. As you'll find out when you drop by at Klinch in the Amsterdam based club Melkweg, where Estroe has as residency. Things re

Rupa & The April Fishes will be touring North America and Europe in the next weeks. Rupa & The April Fishes are specialists in crossing borders and building bridges musically, and that is exactly what they do on their newly released album Este Mundo. The messages on Este Mundo come from the real life experiences and travels of the band and lead singer Rupa, who is a practicing physician by day in a San Francisco hospital. The record addresses many issues including life, love, art, death and the real and artificial divisions that keep us apart. By mixing musical elements of Gypsy swing, Colombian cumbia, French chanson and Indian ragas the band achieves a sound that effortlessly blurs the boundaries of genre and geography. According to lead singer Rupa, “este mundo is a collection of sounds and songs highlighting life's accidental beauty and surging joy as well as their inexorable partner: human suffering.” Buy Rupa and the April Fishes' recordings: In North America: Es

Sunday Synth Jam: BT rocks the crowd at Full On Ferry 2009 in Rotterdam, using Sonifi on the iPhone. Note to BT: This segment is too short to see how much of an individual spin you can bring to a Sonifi performance. Let’s see you melt some faces!

Whenever Frenchman Julien Chaptal jumps on his bike and cycles along one of Amsterdam's tree-lined canals, he's never more than a few minutes away from a fellow house artist. The 'Venice of the North' is at the centre of dance music's current revived interest in classic house sounds because it is home to a large number of its most prolific producers. 2000 And One, Lauhaus, Boris Werner, Shinedoe, Kabale und Liebe, Daniel Sanchez, Sandy Huner, Melon, and Chaptal - Amsterdam's community of house music producers runs deep, and their sound is unique enough, that it is now being refered to as a full blown Dutch underground house movement. Like Berlin and its minimal before it, Amsterdam has become a hotspot for like-minded producers who share a passion for dance music, and who cycle from one another's studios, like one giant village. "I suppose we're like one big community of producers on bicycles," says Julien Chaptal, who seems charmed by life in the city. "A lot of us live in the same area of De Pij

Where the first two parts of the Figure SPC A saw Rotterdam's Jeroen Search build his own sparse yet ultra-detailed world of urgent, perfectly dubbed techno, this third installment certainly doesn't disappoint. What it adds to the mix however is a new edge of playfulness, and expands the limits even further. The acidic, brain-twisting tones of 'Radiate' make up a true techno workout, injected with first class sound design, modernity and lashings of paranoid funk. One for the more freaked out moments, this is Search in his most deviant mode seen in the series. 'Neutral' brings the old-school flavours on full, with a busy, abstract base merging with classic drums thrown into the echo chamber for good measure. Again this cut is more twisted than the smoother vibes of the first two SPC installments, but by no means less magical! As a fitting conclusion to this three-part release, 'Aparatus' is a spaced, slow grooving lesson in expansion and contraction. This dramatic house exploration, with its soaring s