We Love Sounds @ BonythonPark, Adelaide (08/06/09)

Fri 12th Jun, 2009 in Gig Reviews

CHECK OUT ALL THE PHOTOS HERE.

It takes a lot of balls to be the kind of promoter that sits down and decides they want to hold a winter electronic music festival. And not just any winter electronic music festival, an outdoor winter electronic music festival. I’m certainly glad someone did though because, despite a few hiccups with the food and beverage areas, it was pulled off remarkably well. We Love Sounds was like a warm, trance-filled umbrella on an otherwise shitty Adelaide day.

It only took a couple of hours before Bonython Park looked like a pig pen though. The strong scent of manure rose from all over the festival grounds as the dirt quickly became a sea of mud. But that was only outside the tents, outside those glorious bastions of warmth and electro goodness. The tents worked perfectly as stages. Half the time you didn’t even know it was raining until you turned around and looked at all the people tripping balls and staring into the sky wondering why they were soaking wet.

The food and beverages however didn’t fare anywhere near as well. The shameful single tent of food had what appeared to be a two-hour line at all times. Everyone I spoke to said they hadn’t even bothered with food for the whole day, and it wasn’t hard to see why. The bars on the other hand functioned well, until around half past eight when the entire festival ran out of alcohol. It didn’t worry me, but I’m sure there were some unhappy campers who couldn’t get their fix of old Mr. Beam.

In the face of those grave logistical errors, it was the music that stood out for most people. We Love Sounds brought a line-up of trance superstars and electro giants to sleepy old Adelaide, many of them for the very first time. My day started in the big top marquee, Sounds’ main stage, to catch a bit of Laidback Luke action. Predictably smooth and completely uninventive, Luke served up an hour and a bit of the usual mainstream house anthems coupled with remixes he probably made on the flight over, because he’s just that damn fast.

After catching the start of Chris Lake’s tech-house wizardry, it was over to the affectionately titled stage two to see Australia’s No. 1 DJ (as voted by you), Tydi. The man has the skill to be perhaps Australia’s No. 27 DJ, but it’s the showmanship that bumps him up those extra 26 places. Tydi leapt around the stage for the full hour and a half, climbing on top of the mixing table on several occasions to hype up the crowd. It’s nice seeing a DJ have fun for a change and it brings you one step closer to the realisation that you’re actually witnessing a musical act and not a jukebox.

As half of LA electro group Guns N Bombs, Johnny Dal Santo was a bit of a contrast to Tydi’s feel-good trance. Stepping up to the turntables, he proceeded to smash eardrums with the glitchiest electro filth remix of A Clockwork Orange’s theme music imaginable. And there was no relief from the filth, with Dal Santo dropping monster after monster on a seemingly unsuspecting Sounds crowd. After a tag-team effort downing an entire bottle of Vodka on stage with Dal Santo, French darling Bobmo hit the stage to continue the steady rollout of electro bangers.

With half an hour left from a two hour set, I figured I’d be right on time to catch Armand Van Helden’s big tunes, and I wasn’t disappointed. The somewhat inappropriately ghetto Helden had obviously been doing something right because I could barely squeeze my way into the back corner of the main stage. I stuck around long enough to hear I Want Your Soul before making my way back over to stage two to catch the end of Bobmo’s set.

The clock hit half past seven and Bobmo made way for a tall Frenchman dressed in a mask. His arrival was marked by customized visuals on the massive screen behind him, the Danger logo and the fabled pyramid flashing in synchronicity with the epic cinematic intro. Danger brought his unique brand of electro ripped straight from an alternate 80s into a live format for Sounds. The live set was an hour long mash up of his massive singles like 11H30 and his remix of Symbol One’s Love Juice, backed by an amazing VJ performance, and topped off by a completely unexpected piece of happy hardcore. What little crowd actually stuck around was completely enthralled. About three quarters of the way through his set the rest of the crowd came pouring back to the tent, realising that Armin Van Buuren was in fact somewhat boring and that they’d rather dance.

When Kissy Sellout took the stage and dropped about seven tracks at once, he blew minds. Joined on stage by an entourage of friends with air-horns, Kissy and his crew made themselves the obvious choice for an alternative to the massive trance giant Armin Van Buuren. But being one of the biggest DJs in the entire world I figured he was at least worth a look at. Armin is a crowd pleaser, and probably deserving of his place in the pantheon of European trance. Some cheeky remixes like an uplifting version of Smack My Bitch Up sent the crowd bonkers, and closing the show with Silence was a cheesy but inspired choice.

The rain dissipated long enough for everyone who stuck it through to the end to walk back to their vehicles, and as we were sidestepping quagmires and leaping over mud puddles my friends and I thanked the festival gods that someone had had the foresight to put the stages under tents.

CHECK OUT ALL THE PHOTOS HERE.