The Sydney winter We Love Sounds festival escaped a rumoured gatecrashing from ticket-buyers on Saturday. Security and police closed off the Hordern Pavillion in the afternoon professing it was at full capacity. This meant many punters missed Italian electro duo Crookers and electro/house DJ Steve Aoki as the gates weren’t opened again until 8pm. A statement was released from We Love Sounds advocating police to be at fault.
“We Love Sounds sincerely apologise to all attendees who were unable to see Crookers or Steve Aoki… As the promoter of the event, We Love Sounds believe that NSW Police, albeit with best intention, misjudged the situation, to the direct detriment of our paying customers. Rest assured we will be liasing with NSW Police to ensure this will not occur in the future.”
Those lucky enough to see Californian DJ and Dim Mak Records founder, Steve Aoki saw the unanimous highlight of the festival. Aoki opened with Pendulum’s famous ABC news theme remix. “Yeww I love the news!” shouted a sweaty shirtless raver sporting an oversized Southern Cross tattoo.
Heavy metal guitar riffs and Aoki’s fervid screams annihilated our faces. He took punk classics like Refused’s New Noise and overlapped them with electro/house beats. During his latest track I’m In The House Aoki backed up to the rear of the stage before running off the edge and into the crowd. He returned, short of his shirt and conducted the rest of his explosive set without it.
According to Crookers fans, if you missed their set you only missed the letdown performance of the day. DJ’s and producers Bot and Phra are known for putting progressive house windup’s over top of windup’s and this set was no different; mixing genres with songs like Kelis’ Milkshake, La Roux’s Going In For The Kill, AC/DC’s Thunderstruck, Raven by Proxy and even the Lion King movie track Circle Of Life. The tracks were intricately mixed but the crowd just didn’t seem to have the same energy they had for Aoki’s set. Although a three tiered shoulder ride of the male gender said otherwise.
The most acclaimed acts took the inthemix stage with Frenchman Joachim Garraud owning the decks for his first show on a worldwide tour. Garraud played original tracks The Rock and Wrecking Ball but electrified the crowd with a remix of Coldplay’s Clocks and The Chemical Brothers Hey Boy, Hey Girl.
Holland’s Laidback Luke returned for his fourth year to We Love Sounds, delivering layered, complex house mashups. He played everything from Winter Gordon’s Dirty Talk to Christina Aguilera’s Not Myself Tonight.
Due to the drama following Hordern Pavillion’s closed doors, British trance icons Underworld commenced their performance 45 minutes later than scheduled. This was to ensure everyone had the opportunity to witness the kaleidoscope of graphics, fit-inducing lasers and flamboyant dancing from front man Karl Hyde. Underworld played all original tracks with Downpipe, Scribble, the renowned Two Months Off, Strumpet and dance anthem Born Slippy reverberating through the half empty arena. Hyde is a performance poet; a huge strobe-lit screen was brought onstage so that his pelvic gyrations and twisted hand gestures were made the cynosure as he sang and swivelled behind it. For the track Cowgirl Hyde sang from the back of the stage atop an amp as side screens flashed with images of eyes behind video of the live set.
Underworld (Hyde and Rick Smith) took a bow and thanked the audience. Festivalgoer’s soon made their way out through the gates only to be met by winters’ chill and their sweat drying cold.
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