Summadayze: Futuredayze Stage @ Supreme Court Gardens, Perth (09/01/2005)
The idyllic surrounds of the Supreme Court Gardens in the heart of Perth played host to Summadayze 2005 last Sunday, combining the natural feel of grass and trees placed against a backdrop of buildings and skyscrapers making for a surreal experience. The promoters, Future Entertainment and Mellen Events, built on their experience from the previous Summadayze at Belvoir Amphitheatre, taking steps such as cutting down the number of main stages from four to three and designing the layout of the venue so as to optimise the space available.
The Futuredayze tent, centrally located and facing towards the Swan River, would feature the trance and hard dance acts of the day. First up at 12pm was local Church Nightclub resident Kenny L who got things banging away nice and early, keeping his loyal contingent of followers jumping madly away at the front of the tent. Kenny L’s set featured an assortment of trance and hard dance combined with his trademark scratching, including tracks such as Tiesto – Traffic and the white label bootleg of Cosmic Gate vs Freefall – Bilingual vs Skydive.
Adam Kelly, the 2nd and final local DJ to play in the Futuredayze tent, took over from Kenny L at 1:30pm. He opened his set with the classic techno-trance crossover track Renato Cohen – Pontape and changed the direction the music had been heading in towards a more house and techno orientation. As 3pm drew closer Adam Kelly changed his style to make it slightly trancier, playing Ian Brown – Fear and Sunscreem – Perfect Motion, in preparation for Christopher Lawrence who was to follow.
Christopher Lawrence opened with his own production Saboteur, a driving progressive trance number, to a fairly spacious dancefloor. It did not stay this way for long. Next on the playlist was Solid Globe – Kalahari, a driving tech trance tune which got those people in the Futuredayze tent still sitting on their bottoms up on their feet and busting some serious moves. Lawrence continued in the progressive and tech trance direction for most of his set before moving into hard trance territory to finish. By the time he finished the Futuredayze tent was packed with excited people, despite the fact that both the temperature and humidity were rising to uncomfortable levels.
The honours of the sunset set went to Lisa Lashes, one of the world’s best hard house DJs and one of the most popular female DJs in the world. She didn’t waste any time getting into her style of hard music and the numbers of people in the tent swelled quickly. Many people took the opportunity, after having danced to Christopher Lawrence for two hours, to take a break in the shade just outside the tent under one of the red bull tents or in the shade underneath one of the many trees scattered around the Supreme Court Gardens. Tracks played by Lisa Lashes included the hard dance remix of Eminem – Nobody Listens to Techno and a hard dance bootleg remix of trance classic Kernkraft 400 – Zombie Nation. As her set drew to a close the numbers in the Futuredayze tent swelled to massive proportions and it was clear that there was one man the people there were waiting to see..
Armin van Buuren jumped on the decks at 7pm and took the crowd on a three hour trance journey featuring the best progressive, uplifting and tech trance 2004 had to be remembered by. His set reminded us that it’s the DJ’s job to perform, not just by playing records but to put on a show and his enthusiastic interactions with the crowd certainly achieved this. Some of the tracks featured in his set included: Young Parisians – Jump The Next Train (Kyau Vs. Albert Remix); U2 – New Years Day (Ferry Corsten Remix); Alex M.O.R.P.H. – Unification and one of the highlights of the night, Armin van Buuren – Communication Part 3. Armin built his set towards a climax before releasing the classic masterpiece Veracocha – Carte Blanche as his closing track. As an encore, he played the tech trance tune Remy & Roland Klinkenberg – Till Ya Drop! and while he wanted to play another tune following this, the clock had gone past 10pm and the event organisers were strict about enforcing the cut off time.
Summadayze 2005 was a definite improvement on the previous year, but some things still needed attention. There was some sound interference between the sound coming from the Housedayze area and the Futuredayze tent and by the end of the night the condensation inside the Futuredayze tent was so bad that it was raining sweat from the roof! Having said this, the beautiful surroundings of the Supreme Court Gardens provided an ideal venue and the toilet and catering facilities were more than adequate. The music catered very well for the trance and hard dance followers and hopefully we can look forward to events of a similar calibre over the rest of the Summer.
