From Ke$ha to the kings of techno, the 2011 Future Music Festival line-up is the biggest and most varied yet. At this stage, you probably don’t need a recap of the star attractions – but it’s worth noting that the national road-show now boasts almost as many live acts as DJs. In Part One of our latest Behind The Line-Up feature, we quiz Future Entertainment Director Brett Robinson on the festival’s history, the mighty Chemical Brothers and why a certain trash-talking pop star is on the bill.

The Future Music Festival is certainly a very different beast now from its beginnings in 2006. What have been the major changes for your perspective?
I think in the early days we were wholly and solely very much a electronic music festival. Going back in time, the word ‘rave’ was quite often still used when referring to our shows. Future Music Festival for us was a positive turning point in terms of us realising that there’s a lot more out there for us, incorporating other musical styles that are complimentary to our core focus.

We still regard ourselves as electronic music promoters and the core of our audience is very much the dance community. But we also want to attract new people to the festival to discover a little bit more about what we do. We’ve seen how diverse a lot of the big festivals around the world are; they have a strong dance line-up but also a rock and pop sensibility.

I’ve spent a lot of time in our winter going to the States and Europe, trying to absorb and understand festivals overseas – from the big ones like Glastonbury and Coachella to the Ultra Music Festival in Miami, which is very much dance.

I think we’ve conquered that side of things by delivering The Prodigy, Chemical Brothers and Basement Jaxx over the years; we’ve almost exhausted the electronic bands in the world. But we want to keep appealing to new audiences, all the while remembering where we came from and our core audience.

The first Future Music Festival at Randwick Racecourse in 2006 is still buzzed about. While Armin Van Buuren and Erick Morillo topped the bill, the mainstage also had Steve Angello and David Guetta before they went from big to massive.

How important is the element of surprise on the line-ups? Ke$ha comes to mind…
With Ke$ha, we sat around for six months and personally I tossed it up a million times. I think eight out of ten people said, ‘That’s not Future Music Festival’. But there was also the gut feeling that she’s sold almost one million singles in Australia, there’s a huge audience of young – predominantly female – fans who dig her. We want to also appeal to people who are into dance-y, poppy stuff; the tempo of her music is quite dance.

At the end of the day, what we’ve discovered is that the more controversial you are, the bigger hit it becomes. It fuelled a lot of controversy and discussion around the festival, a lot of, ‘They’re off their heads!’

Things like daily newspapers and mainstream media have picked up on Ke$ha more than anyone else. She’s sold more records than any other act on our line-up. Going back in time, we’ve actually said no to a couple of those types of artists thinking we were too cool for it.