inthemix | Event Coverage | Future Music Festival @ Doomben Turf Club, Brisbane (01/03/08)

The future of music festivals for Queensland has finally arrived! With Doomben Turf Club as the consummate host venue for the kick-start of Future Entertainment’s national Future Music Festival tour, Brisbane was treated to something very special, on the postcard-perfect first day of Autumn.

The stages were set with a mega-international line-up that included Chemical Brothers, Sven Vat, John Digweed and many more musicall, Brisbane knew what to expect. But last year’s event suffered from a limited use of ground space and heavily restricted sound levels at the same venue, so there was grave apprehension that the 2008 of production would also be somewhat substandard. This year however Future Entertainment redeemed with the sound levels, which coupled with utilising the immediate inside area of the race-track (the Future Music, Famous and Area 21 stages) as well as the grandstand (Future Funk, Future Music VIP) and adjacent trackside grounds (Ten Pound, Silent Disco), which was a sterling improvement on 2007’s festival layout. Even though the area over which the entire festival was spread was far greater this year, the partitioning of extended and well-signed pathways between each section enabled a very welcome ease of human traffic flow.

With the positioning of the stages and direction placement of the speaker stacks, one could barely hear any amplified sound from the residential perimeter on entry into the Turf Club grounds. However, once inside the barrier provided by the grandstand, the wattage emanating from the Ten Pound stage was suitable pounding. Traipsing from the right of the grandstand toward the purpose-built track-crossing bridge, the not-so tame amusement rides provided fun and entertainment for many riders and spectators alike. With the Silent Disco tent to the right of the bridge crossing, when entering infield for the first time you were left with that special overwhelming feeling of excitement. This area in itself provided its own unique festival dimension, housing the massive Famous tent to the left, as well as the enormous outdoor Future Music stage to the right of the more intimate Area 21 demi-dome as the central location. With ample and easily accessible drink ticket booths and (somewhat overpriced) bar tents, food and beverage caravans, plentiful portaloos, one of two first aid stations, and ample rows of constructed shade umbrellas and tepee-style tents, this inside area was where many punters spent the entirety of the day.

It seemed that 2:30pm was the time to be gathered at the Area 21 dome; one of the few bars accepting cash for tendering Smirnoff-based drinks, provided a great meeting place for many ITMers who downed their first vodka cocktail while starting to get into the groove to the tunes of the beloved local Mark Briais. Given its focal point, it was also a prime location of meeting friends or crew when needing to re-group. After taking in ice-cold starter refreshments, amongst the pleasantries of many a greeting and conversational chit-chat, there was a mass migration toward the Future Music stage as Laidback Luke was in the final minutes of his set, which preceded the one and only progressive house legend, the pioneering genius that is John Digweed.

The massive Future Music stage with Future Entertainment branded banners, with inflated decorations camouflaging the speaker stacks to both sides of the platform could be seen very clearly from the 100-metre or so perimeter depth, thanks to the raised podium on which the DJ outfit was set-up, and amazing visual display emitted from. With Diggers clearly at home gracing the outdoor deck as comfortably as he does the intimate club environment, right from the outset he cast pure musical magic. There was certainly no mistaking the distinctive Digweed element; best described by two fellow ITMers, “he weaved together so much unfamiliar music into a low slung, grinding bassline assault,” and “dirty, relentless, driving… his knack of dropping an uplifting chord progression tune at exactly the right moment is uncanny. Some of those builds got the double arm swirl treatment. Loved the way he stuck to his guns and played exactly what he would play at an early morning slamfest despite the early timeslot.”

Next up, the stylishly cool Grammy Award winning Balaeric dance music DJ producer the ‘S Man’ AKA Roger Sanchez, whose incredibly diverse music taste is in stark contrast to that of Digweed, took centre stage. Cast back to a mid 1990’s time warp, Roger in typical fashion threw down many a classic house tune in his retrospective set – well for the first 25 minutes that I stuck around for anyway. Clearly a crowd favourite that many regular club-goers and house music fans can relate to, after singing along to Funky Green Dogs Fired Up, and Dirty Old Ann’s Turn Me On, I decided this flash-back was not where I wanted to be; for me this wasn’t the ‘future of music’.

Off to the fully enclosed big-top tent where the Silent Disco was taking place. Provided with headphones that only work inside, we were confronted with a two-storey DJ platform, each with its own disc-jockey in full spin. An interesting concept where all sound was projected and received through two transmitted channels. Looking around and removing the headphones it was obvious there were two distinctly different styles of music being played simultaneously. With the discovery of the switch on the headphone, and a glance at the line-up, we knew we could enjoy the sound of Holland’s DJ OD on Channel 1 or local lad Julien Love on Channel 2. Hearing funky tracks which included the likes of Run DMC vs Jason Nevins, and Technotronic, this was quite a fun experience. Especially when half the crowd obeyed OD’s request to come to the front with raised hands to pose for a supposed front page newspaper picture, whilst the others wondered what on Earth was going on.

After an early dinner, it was time to head back to Future Music for the much-anticipated return of Germany’s extraordinarily inimitable Sven Vath. A long-time fan of him since the early days, I was quite surprised to see an unmade up Vath very simply clothed in a plain white singlet over a pair of paint splotched sparkly silver pants. Specialising in minimal techno, while my expectation weren’t met, the majority of his fan base weren’t at all disappointed; with many proclaiming him to have the set of the day. With his recent release of Sounds of the Eighth Season compilation, the trainspotters amongst the crowd would’ve been pleased to hear Supermayer’s Two of Us, Len Faki’s Odyssee, Alter Ego’s Why Not!? and Faust Messina & Dariush’s – Compulsive Disorder.

Over in the Famous big-top the Markus Schulz we saw two years previous at the RNA showgrounds, who then performed with obvious reservation, was finally given the platform this now superstar of trance deserved. With a similar raised podium described earlier with the Future Music stage set-up, Markus owned every punter in the place with his delivery of true reach-for-the-laser euphoric trance tunes. Entering half-hour into Markus’ set to a remix of Insigma’s Open Your Eyes, I stayed for the remainder of his set; it’s been a long time since I’ve heard uplifting trance in this environment with such awesome sound and lighting that did the DJ’s performance justice. Following on from Markus, it was great to see Eddie Halliwell again and to hear his first couple of tracks complement the preceding set, throwing down hard trance tracks without any scratching whatsoever.

But the performance from The Chemical Brothers, who had brought their own lighting rig and stage show, was met with high anticipation from a massive crowd that extended the entire depth of the Future Music stage boundary. With many a little disappointed that the duo’s performance wasn’t as dynamic compared to previous years, The Chemical Brothers’ show this time around highlighted only a few of their ‘classic’ numbers amidst many of their recent productions from the 2007 We Are The Night album. Their set that was made up of No Path to Follow, Galvanize, We Are The Night, Do It Again, Get Yourself High, Hey Boy Hey Girl, Out of Control, Saturate, Star Guitar, Surface to Air, Under the Influence, Golden Path, Burst Generator, Leave Home and Block Rockin’ Beats, as well as a few others, all reworked from their original production to do them justice to their live set. While by some accounts their set was somewhat ‘albumish’, despite the continued improvisation, their visuals and lighting really gave life to their tracks; the sequence which included robots, monkeys, tigers, elephants, insects, eyes, air swimmers, and a freaky-scary clown face, amidst lasers and strobing was really a wonderful visual spectacle.

After an hour and a half, The Chemical Brothers concert was all over, and so too was the second year of the Future Music Festival. With Future Entertainment finally delivering a truly top quality dance music festival experience to Brisbane, I sincerely hope this sets the standard for all others to follow. It really was pure class!