The inaptly-named
Winter Sound System festival kicked off on a sunny 20 something
degree day in Brisbane over the Queen’s Birthday Long Weekend, and
plenty of Queenslanders turned up to Doomben Racecourse on their last
pre-public holiday Sunday of the year. The calibre of attendees was
not unexpected; the ever-present shirtless mafia sweated their way through
the crowds. Even the chills the cloudy evening brought didn’t prove
enough to convince them to clothe themselves. 

The first few acts
of the day were the familiar DJs who frequent Brisbane nightclubs, and
while I’m hugely appreciative of local talent I saw this as an opportunity
to begin the line up for drinks. At over $10 for mid-strength canned
spirits, however, this initial opportunism quickly turned in to regret. 

The initial part of
my day from arrival, and in between drink queues, was spent trying to
navigate my way around the grounds and determine the location of the
different stages. This was made particularly difficult by the lack of
signage, maps and clearly visable (if present) stage names. It was for
this reason I missed out on Zombie Nation and Tiga, two
of the few acts I was most curious to see. Besides the main stage, there
were only two other areas I managed to find out of the five. One was
a small stage at the entrance which was the size of a park rotunda with
barely audible tunes over the loudness of the main stage and only a
handful of people. The other was a room at the very top of the grandstand
which reminded me how I imagine a cruise ship nightclub to be: a dark,
cramped and outdated room with generic music playing. While the underground
nightclub thing is good for an early Saturday morning when you want
to forget that the sun is rising outside, it shouldn’t make an appearance
at festivals. 

The VIP area of the
festival was a room with its own separate bar and outdoor seating area.
The bar served normal priced drinks and was as busy as its non-VIP counterpart,
the room didn’t offer any toilets and the cordoned off outdoor area
presented no better view than one from the grandstand or from on the
ground, so I am unsure of what benefit one would expect to receive from
having a purple VIP wrist band as opposed to the ordinary yellow. 

By the time I’d satisfied
myself with the inspection of the venue including working out the best
toilets (most accessible vs. least people) I settled in to watch the
lineup of DJs performing on the main stage just as Laidback
Luke, the Dutchman who I later heard had put on an impressive show,
made way for famous remixers the Crookers. These Italian DJs
were second only to Steve Aoki as the reason for my lingering excitement
despite earlier impressions. The experience of hearing and seeing the
masters in action was awesome, and despite the fact that I was a little
bored at some points, the pair maintained the crowd’s enthusiasm throughout. 

French DJ Joachim
Garraud, famous to me for his collaboration with David Guetta, entered
the stage next. His signature electric keyboard was slung over his shoulder
and used for belting out the tune of “Smoke on the Water” from time
to time in between songs, a move which managed to draw the cheers of
the crowd right up until the last time it was done. His performance
made way for the highlight of the evening, the electro house sounds
of Steve Aoki. 

Even without the music
Steve Aoki is a genius. The man has mixed tunes from artists as
diverse as Michael Jackson, Duran Duran and Weezer. With the music,
however, Aoki is nothing short of legendary. His set began with a tune
which I know only to be the intro music to the ABC news, however could
have originated with him. This was played a few times repetitively until
Aoki entered the stage to an animated crowd which seemed to have grown
in number ten fold. ABC news intro was then spun into “Warp”, his
collaboration with protégé Bloody Beetroots. It was one of, if not
the best intros for a DJ I’ve seen. While he managed to have the
crowd entranced in his endless remixes for prolonged periods, there
was the occasional lull, however this would all be solved by mixing
up an old favourite, at one point playing his own single “I’m in
the House”, which was very well received. Behind him throughout one
part of his show flashed the words “Dim Mak”, the name of his own
record label which is responsible for the discovery of Bloc Party, Bloody
Beetroots, the Gossip and MSTRKRFT, all of which have at some point
been on constant rotation on my iPod. 

This brings me on to
the point of lighting. For an event which had only one major stage,
the lighting was quite ordinary and nothing more than you would expect
to see at a Backstreet Boys concert. No strobes or technical effects,
just a few screens behind the artist which would mostly be lit up. While
there were blow up mushrooms for added decor, the stage could probably
have done with a screen to project to those further up the back who
weren’t able to squeeze their way through the large crowd to get a
better look.  

Baby Gee was
the last act for the evening. After Aoki left the stage people began
to pile out of the venue, apparently satisfied with ending the night
there, and so by the time the DJ entered he was faced with a relatively
small crowd of what must have been his biggest fans, as what I saw of
the performance was mostly lacking in energy. 

Overall, while each
of the performers I saw are well known locally or even globally for
the different sounds they produce and the diverse contributions they
make to the electro/dance scene this was not evident as they all seemed
on the day to mould into one very long, and at times monotonous, act.