Of all the highlights on the annual dance music calendar, there’s something special about the June Long Weekend. While the others we’ve set aside for events like Parklife and Big Day Out share the spotlight with rock and indie, the winter party weekend is typically reserved especially for heads-down club culture, giving rise to rank debauchery of the very best kind. A big reason for this in Sydney has been We Love Sounds.

The Sounds crew truly deserve recognition for bringing such a fine selection of dance acts to Australia in the seven years they’ve been running their flagship event, and none was more successful than last year’s unforgettable party. While the addition of Armin van Buuren to the line-up elicited a roll of the eyes from the purists, it had something for everybody, with an impeccably organised party that really hit it bang-on in terms of everything you could ever want from that kind of experience. However the same enthusiasm seemed to be missing this year, so with ticket sales way down and Chinese whispers rife I approached last Saturday with high hopes, but just a dash of trepidation.

Arriving early afternoon to discover the weather had at least held out for a sunny, if still chilly winter day, unfortunately the NSW Police Force hadn’t granted us the same courtesy. The fuzz was everywhere, with their four-legged friends tagging along behind them, bringing with them a bucket-load of scowls and bad vibes. It’s difficult to even see what their purpose is anymore, as the behavior of the crowd at an event like We Love Sounds is about as harmless as it gets. Whatever they’re trying to achieve though, they certainly make for an unpleasant start to the day.

Strolling through the entry into the space between the Hordern and RHI, first impressions weren’t that great. Beyond crowd numbers obviously being down, there just wasn’t the same attention to detail we’ve seen in the layout in previous years. All of this is forgivable though, as promoters understandably need to recover whatever they haven’t been able to scrape together in terms of ticket sales. Strolling over to Godskitchen stage in the car park, the complete absence of any kind of sophisticated setup or production (or even a single Godskitchen banner) was a little worrying. But the tunes were booming out loud and clear over the crowd, and that’s all that matters really. Shame the same can’t be said for my little adventure into the Planet Turbo stage over at the RHI. The terrible sound echoed jarringly around the room, with the stage pushed forward into the middle of the dancefloor to accommodate for the predicted lack of people.

The Hordern was hosting the heavily hyped inthemix 10 Years arena, and I was dead keen to get in there for the beginning of Dutch house merchant Laidback Luke – except by 3.30pm, the room was already well full, and absolutely nobody was getting in. It was fairly obvious the situation wasn’t being competently managed either, with security guards sending punters from one gate to the next as the big metal grills were opened and shut, kiddies pressed up against the bars with lollipops in their mouths and desperate looks on their faces, wanting to get inside but not really getting a clear message as to what was going on. I thought Balearic trance maestro Roger Shah might offer a bit of respite over at the Godskitchen stage, but again we’d been thwarted – this time by delayed flights from a gig in Perth. It meant the local support DJ (and funnily enough, ITM forum regular) VLN was offered the extended set of a lifetime, but unfortunately it also meant it would be well over two hours before any kind of international guest took to the decks. Sigh.

But you roll with the punches, and the techno was rolling out smoothly over in The Forum courtesy of The Revenge and M.A.N.D.Y, the latter in particular provided some particularly excellent laptop-live tunes that would have made the day worthwhile for many (along with the appearance of BPitch Control madam Ellen Alien later in the evening). It was a space that was mercilessly free of any the shenanigans that plagued the rest of the festival; it had a lot to do with the excellent selection of underground dance acts who’d lined up to do their thing, but still, every other arena had a similar assortment of quality acts depending on your musical tastes. The difference here was The Forum is a space that’s specifically engineered for clubbing, and lovers of underground house and techno were in for a treat.

By this stage I was willing to do anything to make it into the Hordern, and somehow using my tenuous reviewer status I managed to get escorted past the police hysteria and borderline riots developing on the outskirts of the venue, and entered to catch Italian criminals Crookers blasting it out to a packed room of kids who were absolutely lapping it up. Wow. Why was this manic vibe missing from the rest of the festival? You wouldn’t have even known about any shortcomings if you were getting a fidget thrashing under the bright lights of The Hordern. The ITM banners flanked the action on either side of the stage, and ITM visuals beaming down from the flashy screens, and for a moment things really were living up to what you’d hope, both for the 10th anniversary of inthemix as well as for a festival the calibre of We Love Sounds.

The elation didn’t last long though, as I eventually exited to go check out Gareth Emery over at the Godskitchen arena. With his set duration cut down drastically due to the delayed flights, as if to compensate he hit the stage with energy roaring, fists pumping in the air with a festival-honed set of banging trance and progressive that was everything you’d hope from such a UK stalwart. The lack of any kind of proper setup, lighting or lasers still didn’t matter one bit – but what did matter was the sound had now been turned down so much you could barely even hear it, even when squeezed right up against the front speakers. Assuming sound restrictions were the reason for this, it’s still not nearly good enough. Surely there’s a way around it? Maybe position a few speakers at the back so the sound is dispersed evenly among the crowd, without pumping the volume too high. Perhaps hire a sound technician who knows a thing or two about getting the most out of an audio setup without pissing off the residents too much; or maybe pitch a tent so a lot of the booming is contained within the festival grounds. But if all else fails, simply don’t have an outdoor stage at your festival. I came back a little later to catch Markus Schulz, personally one of my personal favourite DJs and one of the very best that tech and progressive trance has to offer, but I had to turn around and walk away again because it was just too soul destroying watching him fruitlessly trying to capture the crowd under such compromised conditions.

Retreating back to The Hordern where LA cool kid Steve Aoki was just finishing up his set, I again blagged my way past the chest-beating cops to enter the room – only to be shocked by the sight of complete and utter emptiness, except for thousands of empty bottles and cans littered around the place. It made me think I’d stumbled into some kind of alternate dimension. It was one of the most surreal things I’d ever seen, but the question begged – why the hell was this room empty when there were so many people outside absolutely gagging to get in? The promoters later pointed the finger squarely at the cops in a statement issued to ITM. “To our dismay, NSW Police told patrons outside that the venue would be closed off for the remainder of the event, against all advice from the venue and ourselves. They were not in a position to disseminate this incorrect information… The venue, security, promoter and indeed Underworld band management lobbied the Police to open up venue access, a process that took well over an hour. Underworld, aware of the goings on, insisted they would not go on stage until all fans were permitted entry.”

It’s all well and good to blame the cops, who admittedly weren’t offering a harmonious solution (or even using basic common sense, as you’d know if you were one of the few wandering around the devastatingly empty Hordern at 8pm). That aside, anyone trying to get into the venue from 3.30pm onwards would have witnessed an instance of overcrowding that was far from professionally handled. Those who hadn’t gone home in frustration eventually started to file in around 9pm before Underworld came on, but with the headliners playing to a half full room (and it must be said, extremely average sound), Karl Hyde could have punched his hands in the air to the epic chords of Dark Train until the cows came home, and he still wouldn’t have recaptured the flattened energy in the room. I left at 9.55pm feeling deflated.

The 2010 edition of We Love Sounds was bitterly disappointing on many levels. Disappointing that our city’s scene didn’t show up to offer its support for one of its very best electronic events, with a lineup that offered a little bit to everybody. It was disappointing the police were there for the sole sake of spoiling the fun, and it was disappointing that inthemix didn’t enjoy 10th anniversary that it well deserves. It was disappointing that, with such an admirable heritage in electronic music, We Love Sounds was a sub-standard experience for the customers who actually to forked out their cash.