Just before sundown on Friday, I finished setting up my two-man tent – a cheap little blue bastard, outliving its life expectancy by at least three music festivals by my count – standing on my tip-toes, stretching out in front of temporary home, looking toward the curving ocean of wooden skeletons, stripped bare by profound devastation, and felt a feeling like love.
The setting for Paradise, now in its second year, is beautiful. It’s easy to forget Australia can be beautiful, and it’s nice to be reminded. The alpine air was thin, or at least that’s what I told myself while losing breath hiking up the natural incline of the main stage amphitheatre, but it felt fresh and wholesome. The mood of Paradise was overwhelmingly positive, its framework perfect, almost like logistical fantasy. The sound was impeccable throughout – at the both the outdoor stage and the indoor, all-nighter club. All amenities were superb, offering supreme comfort and bountiful potato cakes within the natural splendour. Beers were cheap at the bar, if BYO wasn’t enough, and the coffee was highly drinkable. Paradise is easy. No conceit, no overt branding. Two nights weren’t enough, yet sating just the same, indicating that the measure was just right. The music was solid throughout, primarily a cross-section of Young Electronic Australia 2014, plus a side-serving of guitar-centric acts throughout the sun-drenched Saturday, most of them incidentally breezy, firing up with Drunk Mums and their shout-along Plastic.
There was a sense of transitional minute epochs, relatively established, or establishing, R&B-leaning electronica acts shifting towards something more danceable, still retaining a lingering worship for Jeremih’s Fuck You All The Time – Oscar Key Sung was at his best at his most playful, especially in the euphoric All I Can Do, labelmate Banoffee opening with a cover of Drake’s Marvins Room,technical difficulties denying the premiere of a new track, rounding out her set with Let’s Go To The Beach,the most dancefloor-ready track of her repertoire.
While rising producers explored the boundaries of house with emotive wont, either through composition (UV Boi was a highlight), or inhibition-free vocals (Darcy Baylis, also a highlight). Kirin J Callinan, the weekend’s top-billed artist, always entertaining, featured a gaudy-futurist air-drum contraption, half theremin, half Wii; a not too unwelcome gimmick, but provided little compensation for a dearth of new material, the set truncated by a tardy running time, making way for the full-band groove of Total Giovanni, opening with Human Animal.
Moonlight savings were in effect for the attic club schedule, to great effect, sustaining dancefloor energy – one you’d expect from the most conducive CBD spots, here at a high-altitude crown – well into sunrise. 8am Sunday I walked downstairs, into the cool mountain air towards my tent. I looked at the countless white tree husks and thought about a recent history, not too long ago, the fury that stripped the mountainside bare, and took so much more. Sometimes music can feel bigger than life, sometimes it can remind you how big life is. Music is good like that.
BY LACHLAN KANONIUK
Photo by Jethro Fox
Loved: The serenity.
Hated: Nothing at all.
Drank: It all in.
