CHECK OUT THE FIELD DAY GALLERY

Game on! It was a day of Giant’s Magical Treasure Hunt. Yep, Field Day has a 24 Carat rep for kicking off the New Year with unquestionable goodness, and for the willing delvers there were sparkling shining things to be discovered. Admittedly this year’s lineup set off some forum rants (can’t quote forums, it counts as lazy journalism apparently. So terms like “pissweak” and “WTF” are out). True, with all the other ass-smackingly awesome acts in Australia for New Year gigs, Field Day may have seemed a little ‘sloppy seconds,’ but it’s Field Day people! It still sold out and we the brave were rewarded with all kinds of goodies. We just had to drop the attitude and go hunt for them.

First mission of the day? “Who’s the ‘Special Surprise Guest’ headlining the main stage?” Hmmmm, who’s in town at the moment? Who’s doing other Fuzzy gigs? Could it be Armin? Ferry Corsten? Uh oh… Paris Hilton? (Please God noooo!!) Saved. It’s Calvin Harris fresh from smashing in the New Year at Luna Park last night. That’s our first nugget sorted.

Sparkling highlights early on were Oliver Huntemann, driving the 4 to the floor and getting the pink armbands in the air under the trees at the Left Field Stage. Funktrust DJs priming the groovers for Jamie Lidell by twisting Prodigy’s Poison and the Dizzee Rascal/Calvin Harris production Dance Wit Me into James Brown and other old skool epics. And an absolute new-discovery vein of platinum, Chicago electro trio Walter Meego. They mix the production complexity of outfits like Pivot with the haunted vocal stylings of say Thom Yorke from Radiohead. Their single Forever smashed it (Walter Meego…onto the Watch List)

Props for the venue too, the Domain is an unreal festival site. There are trees, city views and it’s stumbling distance to transport options. And Fuzzy have used the space to tops advantage with the well thought out setup of festival trimmings and the 4 stages, all with awesome sound and all sonically isolated from the others. No bleedthrough. Some a bit quiet maybe, but all with superkeen sound. Especially on the Leftfield Stage. That was Bass To Put Out For. Nicey nicey.

Some of the biggies on The Day were operating in random mode. Berlin Ubermuso Jamie Lidell burst out of the funk cake with a tight-as live band and cool DIY instrumentage, but lost the crowd when he went all ‘indulgent freeform jazz’ on us. Santogold came on 20 minutes late and only played for half an hour. But she dazzled us with the flashy, ripping out You’ll Find a Way, L.E.S. Artistes and Say Aha straight up. Then she finaled by dragging half the front row on stage to formation dance with her gold-clad backup singers. Funniest thing I’ve seen all year!

Serious treasure hunters don’t overlook the tucked away nooks and crannies. Somewhere amidst the Field Day pleasures there was a cocktail bar and cool cinema….and the Further Afield Stage was running everything from Aerobics, Eric Prydz 80s style in honour of The Man Who Would Not Fly, to burlesque, to a lesson in the entire history of our genre in 30 minutes. I arrived at that one just in time to hear the Triple J arts dude explaining how listening to Beethoven is like being fucked by an American football player. It’s not subtle apparently. I’ll take his word for it. Golden.

Late of the Pier are straight to top of my Watch List too. Nottingham indie-electro-rock carnage, musically complex, rhythmically angular and hypercharged. They look too innocent to be igniting carnage of this magnitude. These dudes are platinum alloy folded 290 times.

Digitalism hit the main stage to face a massive crowd relieved that the sun was finally below the horizon, and churning with expectation. Initial perception was underwhelming, but I put it down to placement and an energy slump after the mayhem Ajax had been dishing out. But trust Digitalism, playing live my friend, to captivate early on with Zdarlight and hold us all entranced, sprinkling gems like Pogo and the A-Trak remix of Idealism across the deep carpet of gold dust.

And then…

The Cache, the Stash, the Giant’s Hoard. Boyz Noise delivered the wicked twisted set of the festival. Launching into it with a cool vocal setup from I Created Disco and getting tricky with a sample from the A-Trak remix of Oh!, our dude started out all sparkling progressive then mined deeper and deeper into the driving tech house. Track after track of new crackers bleeding into crowd pleasers like Prodigy ’s Firestarter and the Remix Master’s own versions of Justice’s Phantom Part II, Feist’s My Moon My Man, Cut Copy’s Light and Music and a thousand others. Payload!

And so endeth another Field Day, launching 2009 into a world of new adventures and possibilities. The Giant’s Magical Treasure Hunt has been run and won. The part of the Hunters was today played by us the Field Day Massive, the part of the Giant by promoting juggernaut Fuzzy. Losers? All the moaners who banged on about the ‘shit lineup’ unquote. And winners? Everyone who scored tickets anyway, and set out to Have A Freaking Great Day. Don’t spend your gold bullion all at once!

CHECK OUT THE FIELD DAY GALLERY