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Hindsight’s a powerful thing. To go back merely five years and put a tidy sum into shares of just about any cosmetics company producing tanning lotion would put you in pretty good stead about now. We live on the hottest and driest continent on earth and i doubt there’s a developed country out there that lathers the evil stuff on our (already brown) skin as much as we do. What kind of Supreme Being would condone such irony? Ridiculous. Now that’s out of the road we can look into the fabulous day that was Foreshore Summer Music Festival.

John Dahlback was the first – œbig name’ of the day, and at around two in the afternoon his warm uncomplicated house was timed really well. The Lake Stage was really starting to fill up and his catchy sound was great to walk into. Generous bass and nice melody set a good tone for the afternoon.

Electro remix wizkids Crookers played a nice set of boisterous hybrids of a few styles. They filled the Lawn Stage tent and it was madness towards the front trying to squirm your way through sweaty freaks losing their heads over the mischievous drops of AC/DC and Beastie Boys. Crookers is a Canberra favourite and graciously reciprocated the zeal.

Deadmua5 has completely blown up over the last year, and if it was simply on the strength of his live act over his creative material then it’s well deserved. His talent is as an artisan more than an artist; Joel Zimmerman familiarised himself with computer software and hardware from an early age, eventually progressing on to music production. His stage persona even includes trademark giant cartoon mouse heads in various colours and designs (even an LED lit version) that he constructs himself. His set on Saturday consisted of typical electro progressive house, which was fine if a little repetitive for such a long set. Plenty of slippery bass lines over fuzzed out chirps, punchy drops used surprisingly economically and a good understanding of his audience and what they wanted. Behind him the screen played some fantastic graphic clips crowded with retro arcade references and plenty of neon panache. He brought his traditional red head and a nifty Australian flag head with gold eyes. Despite that, his material wasn’t diverse enough to maintain the energy, and people were ready for Stanton.

The Stanton Warriors have been commanding dance floors since 2001 and have enjoyed playing packed shows in Australia for some time. While other long term producers experiment and augment their sounds to conform to popular taste, the Warriors’ consistency and tenacity to Breakbeat is potent, allowing them to produce a fantastic body of coherent and focused work. Their hard edge, bass heavy, urban sound is infamous and when they rock a show, they totally rock it. At Foreshore this year they fucking nailed it. A better set is hard to remember, and they dropped such a mammoth hour and a half of complete bad-assery (the context grants the invention of the term) that it left everyone a bit exhausted. It was interesting to see a crowd obviously used to standard 4/4 house beats adapting to their busted up rhythms. Even if they couldn’t quite find the groove they were quite content to be steamrolled by the whole thing. The Warriors’ latest party trick, a cheeky mash-up of the Beach Boys Good Vibrations, closed out their set. Solid gold!

Unfortunately the same cannot be said for Sydney producer Bass Kleph. The music itself was a bit limp after such a heavy precedent but his warm enthusiasm was infectious. And then his set promptly shat itself. To drop the ball at a festival is bad form (let alone doing it on the main stage) and the crowd was right on him. Not sure if it was his equipment or the events’, but the music evaporated and he was left to pick it up a minute or two later and press on. Which, to his credit, he did with aplomb. His anthemic This Is The Best Thing did sound great and suited the setting well.

Axewell’s set on the Lake Stage was confident and bombastic but lacked the punch of other acts surrounding it. Not to say that it wasn’t any good, just un-memorable. Considering his self-proclaimed penchant for perpetual innovation and his fear of repetition, it made the predictable nature of his set a little disappointing. I think piano powered electro from 10 years ago is dead for a reason…

The locals manning the cosy Sun Stage were pretty solid and offered a fine alternative to the crowded mess amongst the other two stages. Galvin and Kiz, Derty Rich and Shifty Business in particular stood out. A tidy setup of a simple deck configuration, good sound and an LCD screen made it a nice little dance floor.

The surprise of the day came from Miss Kitten and the Hacker, who brought with them a fierce industrial electro energy that really stood out from their more light-hearted counterparts. Despite the fact they hail from France it wouldn’t seem out of place howling out of speakers in a high class German S&M club. Miss Kitten swayed on stage in a black sequined ensemble and stood tall behind her loop machines and bass guitar, while the Hacker stabbed away on his wall of synths. Behind them was an edgy montage of images with this pseudo soviet militant industry kinda theme, with a particularly razor sharp piece involving Sinatra heading into a bar, getting pissed and throwing down accompanying their vitriolic song Frank Sinatra. Heavy stuff indeed. Great set that built steadily and led into the Beetroots’ set nicely.

If the Stanton Warriors lit the fuse, Italian bandits the Bloody Beetroots were the dynamite at the end of it. It was seriously one of the hardest and most relentless sets I’ve seen, and I suspect that Canberra has seen, in a long, long time. They stormed onto the stage, leaping over their decks, climbing over their equipment and leering through their sinister black spiderman masks. Their music was no nonsense electro fidget house at breakneck speed that dispensed with the pleasantries of build-ups or break-ups and just threw massive drops every couple of minutes. It had a dangerous energy to it as if the whole thing would tip over any second and erupt into anarchy. Despite the aggressive punk attitude to the music there was an important element of fun to it that balanced it out. Their debut long player Romborama was covered well and they no doubt walked away with new fans (including myself). Such a cracking set to finish on that had everyone buzzing, making the arduous slog into town a little more agreeable.

Reports from the Lake Stage confirmed 2009 as the year when ARIA stands for “Arsehole Rolling in Arrogance.” Much like Empire of the Sun’s record, their/his set was 10% gold, 30% silver and, 60% hot air and the thinning crowd proved as much. The people were eager and got their money’s worth in the second single We Are The People, but beyond that it was pretty mediocre stuff. The greatest weakness was the set was so comprehensively choreographed it couldn’t adapt to the surrounds – hard to improvise with a backing track and session dancers. A shame because the program was ripe for a live act like this.

Technically the day was really well organised. Bars were plentiful and stocked; toilets were readily available and pretty well kept. Crowd comfort was handled well with the mind blowing exception of the exit strategy of the Lawn Stage. Bottlenecking doesn’t bloody work! Pissed idiots jostling to get back to the Lake Stage presented a very real danger to smaller patrons in the heat and security were doing little to nothing apart from yelling at us to “chill out”. Cheers guys.

The sound and light setup was absolutely top drawer and really gave the artists a first class setup to play with. The Lawn Stage tent in particular was excellent, despite an inexplicably lengthy wait in the dark between Zombie Nation (great house set) and Miss Kitten.

Despite the bugs that every festival seems to experience it was a great day. There is no doubt that the setting for Foreshore is one of its strongest attributes. Rather than rely on this as the tent pole attraction for the whole day, it has exploited it to generate interest and built a huge infrastructure around it, making it a solid festival that can proudly stand up amongst other premium dance festivals around the country.

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• EOTS review from steli