Live Review: Electric Gardens Festival

The economic downturn from the end of the mining boom has had a small-but-significant effect on fans of electronic music in Perth. There are less and less festivals each summer. Five years ago, it seemed like there was a multi-stage show nearly every other weekend. Sadly, the last few years have seen the back of Summerdayze, Good Vibrations, Stereosonic and Future Music. From this void, a new festival called Electric Gardens has risen although, up until this year, it was an east coast-only affair. 

Perth punters weren't treated to the whole festival line-up — it was more like a taster. Instead of getting three tents with multiple international artists, coupled with local talent, Electric Gardens had three headliners playing back-to-back for a six-hour show. It seems that the promoters were dipping their toe in the water to see if the Perth market is interested in their product and, from the near-capacity Red Hill Auditorium, it would seem that Perth definitely is.

Red Hill Auditorium is, in many ways, an even more beautiful venue than Perth's other amphitheatre that's known to electronic music fans; Belvoir. The views of the CBD skyline and surrounding suburbs light up beautifully against the darkness of the bush. And it was in this sunset of twinkling lights and streaming reds and greens that Israel's Guy Mantzur took to the stage to warm up the arriving crowd. Mantzur is known for his sunset sets, his tune selection almost bordered on the psychedelic with bass lines that throbbed and pulsated — a great opener for the evening.

Anyone who has been a fan of electronic music for the last quarter-century knew the duo who stepped up next. Felix Buxton and Simon Ratcliffe (better known as Basement Jaxx) took to the decks for a set that sampled tunes from the '90s all the way through to the modern day. Faithless, Green Velvet, Armand Van Helden and The Chemical Brothers were mixed along with their own classics such as Do Your Thing, Red Alert, Good Luck and Romeo. Their set had a couple of quirky twists, with a singalong to Somewhere Over The Rainbow and a brass-band cover of Queen's Bohemian Rhapsody. However, it was the final track of the set that made the crowd explode. It really was a sight to see 5,000 people screaming Where's Your Head At at the top of their lungs.

A quick changeover and Eric Prydz took over with a significant lighting rig set up behind him. We were not sure what to expect in a set from the Swedish DJ. He has a pretty significant back catalogue that covers nearly every style of 4/4. The first two hours of a mammoth three-hour set were really impressive. This is a man who really knows how to turn a DJ set into a journey. Starting off at a near-glacial pace, the set built up as a simple red glow and smoke bathed the stage. Whoever Prydz has touring with him as a lighting engineer really earned his fee. Dropping tunes by Squire and DJ Tonio as well as plenty of his own originals, this was a set that really straddled the underground and commercial without falling into hands-in-the-air cheese.

However, when he dropped a remix of Everything But The Girl's Missing, out came the lasers and the set descended into a big-room cheese-a-thon. Epic vocals, snare rushes and a seizure-inducing light show, this one really did take the quality of the set down in our opinion.