Kicking off my Future Music Festival was the one and only Darude. Now, before you read my review of Darude you should YouTube ‘Davvinci SNL when will the bass drop.’ The hour-long set was an endurance test, a torturous hour-long wait for one song. Curiosity brought me to the Future Dome stage to see what exactly an hour of Darude would be. Surely 60 mins of Sandstorm on repeat? Isn’t that what the crowd really wants?
The crowd in the packed out tent was psyching itself up chanting Tag Team’s Whoomp There It Is to instrumental raver tunes, the kind you hear blasting at a gym. Ten minutes into his set and we get a tiny tease of ‘dadadadada’ and the crowd absolutely loses it.
30 minutes later and still no Sandstorm. Just little teases and 138BPM songs that could sound like Sandstorm but weren’t. This is the part where most of the crowd is starting to get agitated and the general crowd whisper was, “Do we stay or go? We’ve waited long enough,” and then finally the line I was waiting for from the dude behind me “Where’s Sandstorm ya shit cunt? It’s what we’re here for.”
50 minutes into his set and I too was getting restless. The best thing that Darude could’ve done at this point is troll the crowd and NOT play Sandstorm. His set is almost over and at least we get a tune that we know, ATBs 9pm (Till I Come).
Then finally, we get Sandstorm and only a two-chorus version. Nothing fancy, no build-ups or anything fun like the Peking Duk boys have made it. It was fairly anti-climactic, the whole set went for far too long and is an hour of my time I won’t ever get back.
I stuck around in the Future Dome set to catch Future-House French DJ/Producer Tchami and he didn’t disappoint. It was a quarter of the previous crowd size but ten times the quality. He effortlessly weaved through his remixes of Janet Jackson’s Go Deep to Jack U’s Take U There and totally hit the spot with OutKast’s SpottieOttieDopaliscious.
Carnage followed Tchami’s set and his raver/dubstep/trap was enough to make me leave the tent to grab a bite while being serenaded by the sounds of Savage jumping up with Timmy Trumpet to sing Swing and Freaks.
Hilltop Hoods played an impressive set on the Future Live stage to a solid crowd, but I feel that all live festival sets should be in a tent to capture the sound better otherwise it gets lost in the open space.
Back at the Future Dome stage and in time for their hit Promises, I thought that dubstep might’ve been done but Nero were a big crowd drawer. They were impressive and even more so when I realised they had a live singer (Alana Watson) totally nailing the high-register notes.
My favourite act hands down was Die Antwoord. They put on a rock’n’roll show from the word go. Yolandi Visser is super tiny and adorable in her oversized, bright orange tracksuits and super high pitch voice. You cannot take your eyes off her and the topless Ninja. I’m really gutted I didn’t catch them at a sideshow.
Back at the Future Live stage and 2 Chainz is sporting a pair of the new Yeezy grey UGG boot-looking Adidas sneakers. His set is mostly comprised of only a verse and a chorus, or just a feature rap before sound bites of hip hop air horns followed by an explosion cut a track.
I learnt my lesson from last week’s Drake sideshow and made my way as close as possible to the stage in the centre of the crowd which Drake would later fly down like an angel and sing in the middle of. Running 30 minutes late to the stage, two girls behind me were contemplating leaving Drake to go watch Avicci because they wanted to see him play Levels live.
The wait was finally over and Drake opened with his triumphant Trophies. My fingers were crossed that the set would’ve been a little different from his sideshow but most of the song order, stage show and crowd banter was the exact same. Drake still played an impressive show full of hits and mixtape anthems and is a man who knows how to speak to command the attention of a crowd. When he did eventually make his way down surrounded by a sea of camera phones to sing Hold On, We’re Going Home, it really was a glorious moment to get so close to the 6 God dressed in all white.
As the show was fairly similar to the sideshow, I left Drake’s set to try catch the tail end of The Prodigy set but sadly missed out. I did however catch groups of people having a hoedown to Hey Brother before Avicci played Etta James’ Something’s Got a Hold On Me as an intro to playing Levels ‘live’. I found it rather poetic that my Future started with an SNL parody happening in real life and ended with the EDM DJ who inspired the skit.
BY MIMI VELEVSKA
Photo by Mark Stanjo
Loved: Die Antwoord.
Hated: My phone dying at 7pm and not getting a picture of Drake when he was singing two metres away from me.
Drank: Blue Gatorade.
