Live Review: Future Music Festival

Skin. We're getting an absolute eyeful as soon as we get our wristbands tagged at the entry. Future Music Festival 2014 has a case of jungle fever, and although the production is a little underwhelming considering the pre-event hype, it's cool to see plenty of punters getting into the safari spirit with lots of costumes and face paint breaking up the muscles and fake tits. R3hab is making the dust fly at the main stage, dropping a few old jams like Alice DeeJay's Better Off Alone in amongst thumping tracks of today. Maximum streamer usage is appreciated by the front rows. Our skin is howling with no shade on the RNA field, so we move to the backside of the event grounds to get a Deniz Koyu fix in the Future Sound System tent. Although the bells and whistles are reduced, he seems to be following the pattern set by R3hab, with Kernkraft 400's Zombie Nation jammed amongst the more modern beats. A few duffed mixes don't help his cause but it does encourage us to catch the final steel drum sounds of Cosmo Cater before Gorgon City take it to The Likes Of You stage. The boys were the perfect accompaniment to Rudimental's tour last year and their deep brand of house goes down smooth once more. The North London duo counter their head nods with some really rich beats, and hanging off the barrier it just swallows you whole. The smoke machines seem out of place though, with security putting on a brave face through the haze. Naughty Boy takes it away from the decks on the big Safari! stage. Yeah he's there, he's got the laptop in front and microphone in hand, but with a four-piece band accompaniment, including one hell of an amazing vocalist, he pulls off one smart show.

Maya Jane Coles is another Brit making our day just that much better, and at the Cocoon stage we are finally feeling the jungle vibes beneath palms and wildlife. Her mixes are like velvet, and dancing within an appreciative crowd we have our first real write-home moment of the event. Wish the cops would go away and stop taking photos with twisted donks though. We then experience the festival's finest corner when we head up the escalator and enter the Knife Party-curated Haunted House. The stage rigs are class, the sound is mammoth and the visuals are enough to make you black-out. A late timetabling change means our expected Baauer set instead comes in the form of Sub Focus, but we're soon not worried about doing a Harlem shake, with the drum'n'bass producer belting it out from within this shining vortex of lights. Militant tempos make the room march, and with a hype man on the mic things get sweaty fast. Even when the sound cuts out the Surrey bloke is unperturbed, and when it returns it does so with the force of a hurricane. We bail to get a little taste of Macklemore & Ryan Lewis, the humble brag superstar and his tight producer leading an impressive selection of musicians and vocalists through the hits and a few old nuggets like Otherside. Dropping Thrift Shop second rewards the early arrivals, while Same Love shows that with engaging and emotional content, even a weak track can sometimes hit a home run. The sound is a bit vacant though; another stack of speakers centre field would've been appreciated.

The sunset slot is perfectly filled by the sweet sounds of Rudimental, with the nine-piece introducing themselves with a soul boogie-down to warm our sneakers soles before the energy steps up. It's a huge set of hits, the four main lads surrounding themselves with some crack players and a few stunning vocalists. They give us Right Here, Baby, Not Giving In and Free – the latter track causing a flash mob of girls on shoulders to form through the crowd – before they come home just as strong, dropping Powerless, Waiting All Night and Feel The Love in one of the day's great sets. We make a note to find out where we can get DJ Locksmith's LFTS cap. Back over at The Likes Of You stage, German football fan Paul Kalkbrenner is ruling with technical prowess and just the right bits of everything. His intelligent techno sounds mint after nightfall and when you close your eyes it's impossible not to be transported to the hippest club in Berlin. We begrudgingly leave though to make sure we're in the Haunted House before things get hectic, and catch the last of electro young gun Porter Robinson. It's baffling how many dance strains he jams into the final 20 minutes of his set, moving from hardstyle to pop-centric EDM on a dime while a dizzying array of visuals spew across the wide-scale screen behind him. Language concludes proceedings, but not without confetti canon action. Everything is better with a confetti canon firing. Then our gracious Aussie hosts Knife Party give us a horror rave to remember, literally playing off the balcony of their decrepit house, destroying the room in cold-blooded fashion. The visuals are an utter sight to behold as Rob Swire and Gareth McGrillen trade moves on the decks, their haunted house blowing away, burning down and rebuilding right before our eyes. It's brash electro house with a large-room feel, and staple single Internet Friends is still enough of a reason to get frantic.

We leave thinking our big beat ride is going to keep trucking on, but sadly Deadmau5 is all style and no substance, taking us on a journey that never really arrives at any destination. When the helmet-wearing rodent appears on stage it's with all the trimmings; the lights are blinding, the smoke machine bellowing. But as his crossed eyes gaze vacantly over the crowd and his head rocks, he seems to continually put the set in a position where it could really kick off, but then he drops something limp like Raise Your Weapon. His revelatory headline performance at Stereosonic in 2009 seems like a lifetime ago. A big name maintaining his legacy is German Paul Van Dyk, who has already taken it over the red line by the time we arrive at the Future Sound System stage, following a quick dance to Lisztomania and Too Young with the Phoenix boys of course. Uplifting trance at breakneck speed is the order of the evening, and the mixing is clean and without fault – the master at work. A polite crowd of devoted followers are matching van Dyk's energy levels with maximum levels of stomping, and they're all rewarded at the end with the 42-year-old stepping out from behind the decks for a post-set meet and greet. The night is then signed off with pure euphoria thanks to stadium drum'n'bass heroes Chase & Status, who drop probably the biggest tune of the whole event with Blind Faith, putting a fist-pumping exclamation point on the entire proceedings.

Smiling and wrecked, all that's left is to disappear back into the urban jungle of the Valley, looking for new adventures with other wild animals.