God bless the singlet-making industry, because it seemed the whole customer base was at The Future Music Festival this past weekend. An insane amount of arms and biceps were on display for everyone to see, and I wouldn’t be too surprised if any other strays from a muscle convention during the week popped on by. The music was probably a secondary thing.
Gypsy And The Cat was a somewhat lacklustre start to the day. A band who wanted to phone it in and just bridge the early day set to get into the rest of the day for many cool drinks.
This started off a type of streak with the insane heat affecting performers on the stage (and everyone else really from the bar staff to the security). Or it may have been something else, who knows?
Pop diva Rita Ora was a little uninspired, but got really into her set with three songs to go that made the crowd come alive from their heat induced slumber.
Techno producer Avicii, made emphatic recovery from whatever ailed him in the earlier festivals, although it felt as if the 90s had started to enforce itself on the day considering the type of techno he was playing behind the decks.
Veteran crowd pleasers Dizzee Rascal and DJ Steve Aoki were in their elements though, skillfully bringing their audiences up into a more awake, dance-able mood and somehow keeping them at that point.
And so there was the formidable sight of a field full of people bouncing up and down as one with one hand in the air, doing the absurd dance to K-pop monolith meme Gangnam Style by Psy. The same type of formidable timing also caught the energetic Azealia Banks powerfully spitting her way through the stunning 212.
The acts playing actual instruments rather than turntables and samplers advanced themselves from shorter festival sets (which were in place because of the heat apparently), almost exclusively cramming tunes out such as Some Nights (Fun.) and Sweet Disposition (The Temper Trap). These bands were a little out of place, with the verse-chorus-verse-chorus song structure odd for the crowd who were evidently more into repetitive dance music to be enjoyed on copious amounts of drugs.
The Stone Roses especially impressed however, with Ian Brown in good voice while the nasty growling voice of The Prodigy filled out the festival grounds with evil intent. It was a wonderful relief to see Banks join the Brit electronic punks for a still-scorching Firestarter. Which, in a way, was an apt eight-minute ending soundtrack for the whole sweltering weather thing Mother Nature gave the crowd down at Flemington Racecourse for the day.
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