Golden Plains is never an electronic music fan’s wet dream. Perhaps presumptuous, but many in the inthemix community, including myself, would be indifferent if told that Pavement and Dinosaur Jr. were headlining a music festival.

What’s so great about a music festival that has never tried to appeal to a techno head or electro junkie? Well, if you get there early enough you can pitch tents amidst trees and shrubs hardly two minutes walk from the stage. The music will never finish before 5am on either night and it’s always some variety of electronic beat pumping from the weathered PA at sunrise. You can bring whatever alcohol you want (OMFG!) so long as it’s not in glass. And, the amphitheatre is Supernatural.

Without wanting to reduce a two-day music festival to four basic pros, I will add a fifth. For people who are patrons of one musical genre, Golden Plains brings an amazing array of variety to cynical or jaded tastes. 2010 was no exception and people left, like every other year, knowing at least two bands whose records they were going to buy. And for many others, the music merely enhances a great weekend of partying.

Like any other music festival in Australia, the breadth of music spurs much discussion and debate. Pavement and Dinosaur Jr. were worth watching because it fuelled much discussion on how they had achieved their cult and critical acclamation. I say this without any condescension (knowing that electronic music is privy to exactly the same criticism).

The Dirty Projectors were particularly stunning and the shared singing duties added an amazing depth to their performance even if they exited the stage 10 minutes before the listed set time. An audience member in a green suit made up whatever visual component the Dirty Projectors lacked. He emerged from the middle of the crowd in an enormous plastic bubble. Beer in hand, he got thrown like a beach ball to every corner of the amphitheatre.

Space Invadas is a new collaboration between Sydney-ite Katalyst and * Englishman Steve Spacek, who looked like a character from the Fifth Element in his white wayfarers. His voice had amazing soul, not least when he sung an entire song in falsetto with one finger plugged into his ear.

The Big Pink were arrogant and obnoxious, yelling “How you doin’ Melbourne? We are in Melbourne, aren’t we?” Velvet and Dominoes was perfect for the damp stage and yet their rapport with the crowd seemed too insincere.

The DJs came home to roost at the stage like clockwork every night at around 1am. Andee Frost mixed from his nu-disco comfort zone but it was no less amazing. It gave the light rain an energizing quality. The anticipation of who was to follow increased sizably, when Frost introduced his successor to the decks, as “the best DJ in Australia”. So when Ransom arrived at the stage in his Iron Maiden t-shirt and started playing hip hop, he automatically assumed the aura of a guru across all musical genres. He was technically amazing, playing pop hip-hop like Lil Wayne and Jay-Z, but his scratching and beat juggling did eventually wear a little thin.

An unfortunate selection in the line-up had to be Scattermusic Soudsystem and Opulent DJs, who played Saturday and Sunday nights respectively. I quote both at the same time because they played the same ‘party’ music for much too long. They both had three superfluous people jumping around the stage and yelling down the microphone. (One of the Scattermusic MCs also had an annoying habit of blowing a whistle through the microphone). They also both used a piercing air-horn sound-bite every time they laboured over a mix. It was at times frustrating to hear two nearly identical slots filled by ‘party’ collectives who had either flow or groove.

The Midnight Juggernauts and landed themselves a prime time set on Sunday at midnight. (Coincidence? I think not). Maybe underrated in their own country, they put on a show that surely would have won them many more fans. Drummer Daniel Stricker was addictive to watch, his face never visible behind bobbing lion’s mane. And lead singer Vincent Vendetta unleashed his inner sailor when he took a blown-up rubber dinghy threw it into the pit and clambered aboard.

It very apropos considering Melbourne’s bad weather had managed to make its way to Meredith. To call it the rain torrential would be an understatement. The sloppy conditions did not affect their tight set, though, with Tombstone and Shadows notable alongside new single This is New Technology. The rain added to an amazing and spontaneous live show.

The second night had started well. Enter Opulent DJs.

The Gaslamp Killer – aka the mutha fuckin’ Gaslamp Killer – drilled a giant dubstep sound-hole, the size of which the Amphitheatre (or PA) is not likely to forget. With a haircut that’s probably visible from his hometown, Los Angeles, he had people stomping in the mud from the very beginning of his set. He played brand new, unreleased Flying Lotus and even Everything in Its Right Place by Radiohead. The wobble and glitch sound was something unfamiliar to the audience, but the crazy man’s energy was something that pulled numbers normally unseen at that time of night at Golden Plains.

Optimo had the two hour closing set at Golden Plains and by then the clouds had run dry. A lot has been written and said about Optimo in Australia, so I was expecting big things from a duo whose residency of Optimo (Espacio) in Glasgow is the stuff of legend. For the most part, their song selection was cheesy. As the end of their set drew closer, they tended to play two pop tracks then pause. One track; pause and so forth. The result was a set that never really gathered momentum. Damian Marley’s Welcome to the Jamrock was somewhere amidst their lethargic, drawn out encore, which bought a little glean to an otherwise disappointing set.

Golden Plains does not cater for electronic music. It’s a smorgasbord of different music. Even though I’ve been critical of the early morning party, the festival itself is logistically amazing, from its self-composting (and clean) toilets to the Outlands Ecoplex Cinema.

It’s almost worth separating the music from the festival itself. As festival caretaker and go-to-woman for any enquiry, Aunty Meredith, signed off for another year on the Golden Plains website: “Still cleaning up here, but feeling like it was a wonderful one.” I know for sure it was a wonderful one.