Let's establish one thing: for the entirety of inaugural Listen Out party, it fucking poured rain, making the entire gig surreal, sensual, and completely unseasonably freezing cold.
This year's triple j Unearthed winner Sable described his sound simply as 'love making music'; the local Perth youngster kicked off Listen Out with some upbeat and swarming vibes. British house DJ Laura Jones played an hour-long set which included well-known tracks Live A Little and Love In Me. While she built a core audience at the front of the stage, most of the crowd filtering in through the main entrance seemed keen to hit the bar before the dancefloor. Sydney dance trio Rüfüs drew a huge crowd, finishing off the set with a drum-laden version of Desert Night and getting a huge response. Miguel Campbell was on the decks as the rain started to come down on the festival. Just Blaze entertained the crowd with a DJ set full of hip hop and a little bit of Daft Punk and dubstep along with about a million air horn samples which he triggered throughout.
Making his Australian debut, John Talabot charmed the crowd with his groovy and shadowy take on deep house music. Joined by fellow Spaniard and long time vocal and production collaborator Pional, the pair banged away at drum machines and plucked at keyboards with a set full of tracks from 2012's critically acclaimed fIN to the crowd's delight. Starting off her set with the aptly titled ATM Jam, self-confessed hot head and all round bad girl Azealia Banks rapped her way through a performance full of her token contentious lyrics coupled with her eclectic taste for dance music. “This track has got me into a lot of trouble in the past,” Banks laughed as DJ Cosmo dropped a version of Harlem Shake that included those drenched, historic synths from Underworld's Born Slippy.
English electronic music duo AlunaGeorge stepped out on the soaked 909 stage, throwing a poncho into the crowd for a lucky audience member and launching into Just A Touch. “Alright, it's time to shake off this cold weather. Let's heat things up a bit,” said vocalist Aluna Francis before the group kicked into single You Know You Like It. House music's latest poster boy Duke Dumont opened his set with his Ministry of Sound chart topper Need U (100%), riding smoothly into MK's remix of Storm Queen's Look Right Through. Dumont continued in a similar vein, churning out pulsating 120bpm goodness before slowing things right down towards the end with his soul soothing remix of Haim's Falling. TNGHT gave an exceptional performance, with Lunice from the bad jumping into the crowd and lip-synching along to the set. The group capped things off with the chilling Blood On The Leaves, standing out as one of the highlights of the festival.
Looking at Disclosure's impossibly rapid rise to fame, it's blindingly obvious that the boys have perfected the pop/house music formula as well as their aptitude for choosing charismatic guest vocals. Disclosure's live set-up is intimidating to say the least, especially considering that it's all shared between just the two boys. The humble Surrey born brothers performed an array of impressive live adaptations of their wide library of hits, to conclude a day that confirmed Listen Out's title as not a festival, but a 'carefully crafted party'.
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