2008 is being welcomed in with a mighty cold blast here in the UK, which is of course one reason why our DJs love to play the big festivals that happen at this time of year in Australia and other suitably summery parts of the world.

Goa has a long tradition as a New Year’s hangout, with its history of wild trance parties on the beach. And at the weekend it saw India’s first ever major 2-day electronic music event in the shape of the Sunburn Festival. (We previewed the appearance of Above & Beyond hosting their own Anjunabeach stage there a while back). Obviously this sponsored event, put on by MTV India star Nikhil with a whole host of top notch international guests is a big step for electronic music in India. The party was aimed at an enthusiastic Indian audience who seem to be really getting into dance music these days so it was an important milestone.

We spoke to Together at Turnmills resident Anil Chawla today, who was one of the guest DJs who flew out to play. He said, “The festival was really good, and it was such a nice setting, bang in the middle of the beach! Highlights for me were Aldrin, Pearl, Pete Gooding and Carl Cox, who destroyed the place with the last set of the festival. The whole thing was sponsored by Smirnoff too, which was cool as there were lashings of flavoured vodka on the go and lots of drunk DJs getting stuck into the free booze.

“The actual festival finished at around 11pm on Saturday, but the afterparty at Titos was bloody brilliant too and went on until around 6:30am. They kindly asked me to play a set there too, along with Axwell, Aldrin, Pearl, Nikhil (the event organiser) and Arno Coast/Norman Doray.”

It will be interesting to see how the scene develops in India on the back of such a big event. The messageboards have plenty of positive feedback (bar all the familiar festival complaints about toilets and signage). The Goa trance purists of old will no doubt have their own opinion on this development, but with big organised events now a regular fixture across so many countries in the world it’s good to see India getting a taste of the action and supporting local talent alongside the big guests in the process.

Meanwhile Anil is now back in the icy UK, but is looking forward to a massive year which sees him working on an album for Global Underground (with Dale Anderson) and heading off on a GU tour of South America in July.