After the recent catastrophic failure of the Heatwave festival, many looked towards the 20th anniversary of the Big Day Out rather tentatively. For the first time in many years, tickets had not sold out. However, dance music fans had no reason to look towards the day with anything but glee: Where the line-up arguably lacked in some other genres, dance music and hip hop more than made up for it.

The first act to interest dance music fans (apart from T-Rek continuing to ride the success of Out My Bitch) was the Melbourne natives Naysayer and Gilsun. They played possibly the first ever AVDJ set Big Day Out has ever seen, absolutely smashing it out of the grounds. It takes serious talent to make the Boiler Room jump up and dance to Seinfeld quotes. With both members of the duo meeting the age qualification, this act is a contender to join the ranks of Arty and Skrillex and make it into the “Under 25 Club” at some stage during 2012. Keep your eyes on them.

Following Naysayer and Gilsun were current members of the “Under 25 Club” Odd Future. Despite the microphones distorting when too many of the crew rapped at once, then being too quiet when anyone but Tyler the Creator had a solo, Odd Future still whipped the crowd into a frenzied state. It got a little out of control and glass got thrown onto stage – that’s when things got surreal. Despite initially threatening to cut the glass thrower, OFWGKTA championed the anti-violence-against-women cause by insisting nothing be thrown at Syd the Kyd. They said that they would cut their set short if things got too violent, insisting that they wanted it to “stay peaceful”…but then they played Yonkers.

Having been put through the intensity of Odd Future, Royksopp seemed like a nice way to relax. After all, their albums are filled with light, calming tracks. However, when live, Royksopp transform themselves into hyper energetic dance music. Armed with a plethora of hoods and helmets that were the definition of strange, Royksopp turned Remind Me and Eple into kick and bass heavy dancefloor hits. Then, in the strangest move ever, This Must Be It and What Else Is There went dubstep. Royksopp have by no means taken a page out of Skrillex’s book, screeches and wubs weren’t even remotely close to the sound. However, they are experimenting and the dubstep beats sound amazing alongside those two massive hits. This is an act that just emits pure euphoria and I could not recommend seeing them more highly.

Bassnectar, on the other hand, didn’t need to experiment at all to bring out the dubstep. Watching him play boggles the mind wondering exactly how he could see past his waist length hair as it flailed in front of his face as he moshed. Bassnectar unleashed a series of brutal bass sounds that only one of the pioneers of “brostep” could have provided. The man is a not only a master of the “brostep” scene, but seems to genuinely enjoy performing, appearing to have as much fun moshing about to his track The Matrix as the crowd in front of him did.

Another master of his own genre, Girl Talk not only devised the formula for a successful mash-up, but so far only Naysayer and Gilsun have come close to matching his prowess wielding it. The high point was definitely Get It Get It, with the entire crowd going crazy for the Bad Romance lyrics acting as an intro to the Windowlicker sample; which cut through and owned the Boiler Room. By the end of Girl Talk’s set, he was shirtless and there were about fifty people on stage with him; two massive bags of balloons released into the crowd. The only way to top that was to rain fireworks down on to the stage. The result was a massive pile up of effects that left the crowd in awe.

Kanye West trumped Girl Talk’s effects in all of five seconds. Starting with a giant angel background and epic choir, Kanye entered astride a cherry picker with conspicuously naked looking dancers running around the stage; making for the most epic sentence ever. Equally epic was, well, everything about the set. Kayne’s stage production perfectly matched the high level of production his albums are renowned for. For the big flashy tracks, like All of the Lights, they literally pulled out all of the lights, and then threw in some lasers just to be sure. For the rawer, stripped back tracks like Jesus Walks, there was what appeared to be just a basic stage flood with a flat colour light across it, usually blue. Breaking his set up into three acts, Kanye controlled the energy and flow perfectly, with the set hitting a massive high at Gold Digger.

Closing out the festival was Nero and their brand new live show: a centrepiece made of old CRT monitors and speakers that dominated the stage. While the photosensitive epileptics may not have appreciated it, everyone else loved it. When Promises, which had just reached nineteen on the Triple J Hottest 100, began, hordes of fans flooded what little space was left in the Boiler Room. The epic sing-along that ensued answers the “Dubstep: friend or foe” question: Given the massive number of people tightly packed into the Boiler Room; I’d say that, to Australia, dubstep is a very good friend.

Speaking of good friends, the Big Day Out has been Australia’s since its inception twenty years ago. While its 20th birthday was met with many issues, the fact remains that no festival in the country can match the musical diversity of the Big Day Out. With the lean towards dance music this year, fans of the genre were still treated to an excellent celebration. Besides, people tend to save the big parties for their 21st nowadays anyway.