Low Fi Festival @The Deen/TheShed (23/10/09)

Wed 28th Oct, 2009 in Gig Reviews

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The day was hotter than hell, the venue was epic and the line up was action packed, Knowledge Music’s Low:Fi Festival raised the bar for the Perth summer festival season. Wandering around the stages; there were five, you could find any sort of talent pumping out to appreciative punters.

Down below on the backstage, Rregula had the fat DnB beats rocking a pretty much packed out room, switching it to breakbeat, and dubstep, issuing a signal of what was to become the norm of the day. Next up was Hench, the lesser known alias of one of the headliners to take the main stage later in the day, he put on a smashing set, holding a huge crowd from start to end.

In The Deen main room, Calyx And Teebee had set the place on DnB fire, they were fantastic, and the temperature was intense, dropping in some tasty teasers in Bad Company’s Planet Dust as well as their own banging tunes Warrior and All That Remains. Catching a little Digger Rockwell to escape the heat, he had a wonderful party vibe going, dropping Kriss Kross’ Jump as well as other old school classics.

With the DNB heads occupied, MJ Cole kept the other punters bouncing outside on the main stage, mixing old school House Of Pain, with some chunky garage sounds. Charli 2Na had the crowd bouncing along to Jurassic 5 classics Whats Golden and Work It Out as well as a scattering of his own tunes.

The main access to the main DNB stages were blocked off rather early, making access impossible unless you had a spare hour to line up, Commix and Noisia were heard from the bar, and it sounded like they were rocking. Commix bagging Five Reasons while Noisia could be heard dropping the epic Diplidocus.

Upstairs in the local room, Kito and Rekab were serving it up to a modest and appreciative crowd, this was the place to be, the beats were phat, the air con was welcoming and there was room to bounce. The pair played with the crowd and were one of the funnest acts to watch.

Down on the streets, the biggest DNB draw card had graced the stage, TC and Jakes. Their set was a mixed bag of DNB classics and cheese, Kicking off with a remix of Daft Punk’s Harder, Better, Faster, Stronger, then chopping into their own Where’s My Money all while rewinding and dropping into Pendulum’s Fasten Your Seatbelts. Drum and bass and dubstep was chopped and changed, Rusko’s Cockney Thug became Chase And Status’s Smash TV to the most awesome Bodyrock by Andy C and Shimon.

Shock One jumped in with Kito and Rekab, to blast off with Caspa’s remix of Wheres My Money? before continuing on with the funky dubstep pace. Watching Shock One perform is an event in itself, he jumps harder than the punters and you can tell he’s excited about what he’s gonna play next, he even picked Kito up and offered her to the crowd at one stage, awesome fun.

The man most had came to see, arrived late, and left early, but no one really minded, Nas was here, and he brought with him one the most awesome live bands a music lover could imagine. He rocked Hip Hop Is Dead to kick things off, and by the reaction of the crowd, it clearly was not. He took the fans on a journey, before finishing with Made You Look, perfectly ending the day in a puff of smoke.

There was niggling between punters on the way out about the lines, the security and the closure of the Shed stage, but that was all a bunch of meh. Low:Fi was a mad success, it rocked hard, and was well worth the price of admission, bring on next year’s.

Were you there? Find yourself in Digital Junglist’s gallery