Live Review: Future Music Festival

10 March 2014 | 3:22 pm | Cyclone Wehner

‘Phazza’ proclaims Future the best Australian festival, dissing its rivals. Political!

The Australian music festival scene may be in transition, yet Future Music Festival is shaping up to be a huge success. Ahead of today's event, promoter Brett Robinson told The Age that they anticipated a turn-out of 40,000-plus in Melbourne, many wanting to catch the new 'Cat In The Hat', Pharrell Williams. The day is sweltering, but the biggest challenge is negotiating the innumerable timetable clashes.

As we look around at the youthful crowd, my plus one is stoked he shaved off his salt-and-pepper beard in order to better fit in today. We note the percentage of punters wearing shorts today sits around 99.5% and many are way too short to flatter. On the main Future Music stage, Dada Life are intense for 3pm. This Shit Is Bananas, all right! Words flash up on the giant screens – “ALCOHOL/DRUGS/OVERDRIVE/NOISE!”  – and the up-for-it punters feel as if the Swedish DJ duo double up as mind readers. One half of the pair inform us we were “born to rage” and those who haven't already overdone it, which necessitates some downtime under a shade tent, feel the love.

Brit urban producer Shahid “Naughty Boy” Khan takes the Safari stage mid-afternoon with his band, the man himself on MPC/keyboard. What his troupe lack in presentation, they make up for with energetic performances. Soulstress ShezAr (Labrinth's sis) opens with a stellar Wonder, Khan's early hit with Emeli Sandé. UK MC Yungen credibly fills in for Wiz Khalifa on Think About It. Naughty's band cover Daft Punk's Get Lucky as a smooth R&B jam. Alas, before La La La concludes, the crowd are already deserting him for Pharrell Williams.

Williams appears on Future's main stage with not a band, but a DJ, Eque, and dancers – and he's wearing that hat, albeit in black. The ubiquitous star, soon topless, performs a mega-mix of his greatest hits, including productions for others – the first, Snoop Dogg's Drop It Like It's Hot. He revisits his solo debut, Frontin', plus N*E*R*D's She Wants To Move. Nonetheless, the massive crowd are feenin' to hear those recent smashes – Blurred Lines, Get Lucky and Happy – and, with a 30-minute slot, they don't wait long. 'Phazza' proclaims Future the best Australian festival, dissing its rivals. Political!

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Pharrell gives Kaskade a shout-out before the discreet, Mormon DJ hits the stage, clean-cut in white T-shirt and shades. The Chi-towner emerged as part of the '90s' West Coast deep-house movement alongside Miguel Migs, but he's since reinvented himself for the amorphous EDM era. Bouncing behind the decks, Kaskade now specialises in euphoric, trancey house – epitomised by his current single Last Chance (with Project 46). He also spins a modish rave remix of Lana Del Ray's Young & Beautiful.

It's ironic that just as Russia is sliding back into isolationism from the West, the country is producing its first global superstar DJs – like Arty, playing on the marginal Future Sound System platform, amid a smoke machine-generated mist. His small, albeit respectable, audience apparently cares little for geo-politics. Arty, hands-in-the-air, favours progressive trance firmly in the European tradition. The major surprise of his set? He pulls out Daft Punk's disco-house classic One More Time.

A timetable change means that some will miss Harry “Baauer” Rodrigues – switched with Sub Focus in Knife Party's Haunted House tent, the FMF 'bass arena'. The Brooklyn-based upstart, who crossed over last year with Harlem Shake, is anxious to prove himself no one-track pony and he achieves that, even if the crowd is smaller than might be expected. And, yeah, he drops Harlem Shake at the end. There's really no escaping it.

That teen prodigy Porter Robinson is a regular Australian visitor. North Carolina's inventor of complextro, considering himself primarily a producer, had intended to unveil a live show this year but, when his DJ sets are this exhilarating, what's the rush? The EDM poster child's epic style is that of a postmodern quick-mix that lurches from aggro bass to melodic synth ambience with intricate sonic textures and Robinson jumps frenetically as he plays the Haunted House. He actually drops Kanye West's punk Black Skinhead. Supernaturally good.