I’ve been playing the Met in Northern Ireland for over five years now and over this time I have developed a fantastic relationship with the promoter Mark Dobbin, who also looks after my diary in Ireland generally. The thing that first strikes you about the club is that it appears to be in the middle of nowhere. However, the catchment for the club is pretty much the whole of Northern Ireland and as we pull into the massive car park I am always astounded by the number of coaches and cars in there.

I arrived at the club at around 10.30pm accompanied by Tina (my wife) and Mark Dobbin. As usual the club was already busy. The crowd were being warmed up excellently by Chris Davis- the resident DJ, who is definitely one to watch for the future.

After enjoying a quick drink with Mark in the lavish VIP room overlooking the club I made my way down to the DJ box to get to work. The strict licensing laws in Northern Ireland mean the clubs must close at 1pm. I was due to play 11 until 12.30 and was by now quite eager to get on.

The first record is always a tricky one. The atmosphere in the club when I am about to start pretty much dictates the first record. If the atmosphere still needs building I will tend to start with a few quite deep, moody, percussion based tracks to develop some anticipation and tension in the crowd. However, if the atmosphere is already there I can get straight in there and whip the crowd up from word go. As usual, it was the latter situation at the Met. After Marks trademark introduction I was ready to go. I kicked things off with the new Night Vision track- belivin’ which is getting some fantastic reactions at the moment, the Met being no exception.

The Met is one of those archetypal big room clubs. It has a massive sound system and a fantastic lighting rig. The room set up is almost like an old theatre- no matter where you look you can see people. It’s one of those clubs that I can’t help but get a little nervous before going on. But once the first few records are over all that is long forgotten.

The crowd were both receptive and interactive and made the experience extremely enjoyable. As the night rolled on the atmosphere seemed to get more and more intense with tracks like Spellbinder and the new Tiesto track – Traffic really tearing the place apart. To round my set off I played Ronski’s new remix of Binary Finary, which was a fitting finale to what was a great night. I let Chris Davis close the night so I could get back to Belfast for my early flight out the next morning. After signing everything from a bar matt to the last Resident Transmission compilation I made my way out of the club to the car.