Field Day
The Domain, Sydney
Saturday January 1st, 2011

Thanks to the recent inclusion of Bondi Beach’s New Year’s Eve extravaganza, Shore Thing, to their already bustling event calendar, the period from the 31st to the dying strains of the 1st has unofficially been termed ‘The 48 Hours of Fuzzy’. As the second half of a leg which started with Dave Guetta and a whole bunch of fireworks, Field Day has a lot to live up to, primarily because most of the attendees haven’t yet put their heads on a pillow. As always, the heat doesn’t help, by the time the gates open it’s already a stinking 31 degrees, enough to deter most p(m)unters from catching the vibing Sosueme DJs in their prime (read: as first act of the day) and forcing many of them to abandon their plan to throw ‘80s themed shapes to Chromeo as they scamper around The Domain in search of shade.

That’s convenient, because as fantastic songwriters as Dave-1 and P-Thugg are, their stage-show is hopelessly lacklustre. Bearing in mind that they have just flown in from Pyramid Rock and are off to Summadayze soon after, you have to cut them some slack. And Dave (the good looking one, also A-Trak’s brother) still rocks a very expensive looking suit while singing perfectly in tune, so that’s a bonus. Unfortunately, most of the music seems to be pre-recorded, and short of P’s quite obvious vocoder hose. You almost wish their long-legged keyboards would start doing the can-can for some extra excitement. The new material blends into the old material, which all sounds just as good on a car stereo. Next.

Big brother Macklovitch (A-Trak) isn’t having the best day either. Not only does his sound audibly cut out for a good few minutes at the beginning of his feted hip-hop set, but he chops and screws far too many tracks in a short space of time before anyone can remotely latch onto them. Coming off more Girl Talk than tour DJ, there’s little doubt the man is talented, but being nestled behind the main stage is clearly not his thing, and though he gets love from a devoted audience, there’s not much he’s doing that won’t be covered by anyone else today. That person is French DJ Who Isn’t On Ed Banger and dark horse Yuksek, who sneaks out onto the Centre Stage while nobody is paying attention and unassumedly delivers the best set of the day. Packed back to front with his own remixes of some of 2010’s biggest hits, as well as some considerable punch from his own record, Yuksek has everyone in the VIP bar collectively asking ‘Who the fuck is that?’ thanks to his considerable skill of entertaining without posturing.

That’s more than can be said for Ducksauce, part two of A-trak’s aural assault, who spend a good five minutes entering to the sound of March Of The Valkyrie by Wagner while waiting for a massive helium duck to inflate, the duo established what their reputation was largely about; a whole lot of ego and even more hot air. Ducksauce also set the tone for the worst sound quality of the day, with the bass being so low that some thought it had cut out completely. Though nobody likes to be deafened, the fact that you could talk at a normal level three rows from the stage indicates that something was going fundamentally wrong with the mixing, a fact further exacerbated by a particularly boring set of song choices and the inevitable drop-out to let everyone sing the refrain of ‘Barbara Streisand’ at a level far louder than their own speakers.

It’s ironic that the best sounding acts at a festival renowned for dance music were the bands. Both The Rapture and Tame Impala delivered impeccably polished and highly enjoyable performances, with the former leaning heavily on their killer 2006 record Pieces Of The People We Love, with frontman Luke Jenner taking a dive into the crowd and ramping up the energy on a level far greater than any of the DJs could muster, with the exception, naturally, of Justice. Tame Impala secured the premium slot of the day, wooing overtired ravers as the sun went down with some fantastic guitar work, dazzling harmonies and pretty much the whole lot of the J Award-winning Innerspeaker. Watching Kevin Parker pull otherwordly sounds out of his axe and The Rapture pushing the accelerator on the cowbell proved to be the most entertaining. As for the Perth quartet’s cover of Blue Boys’ ‘Remember Me’, well, that’s becoming the stuff of legends by now.

Less legendary but just as passionate were Brooklyn’s Sleigh Bells, out to prove to the world that they were more hardcore than Peaches, whose preceding DJ set leaned heavily on fuzz, metal and sex, and that they wouldn’t become The Ting Tings of 2010. Appearing before a wall of Marshall amps, they were most certainly as loud as you’d expect them to be, but most of the aural carnage was pre-programmed, leaving Alexis Krauss to do the bulk of the work. Given that most of Treats revelled in vocal distortion, an effect that seemed to have been surrendered in customs, Alexis was drowned in the wall of sound that was entirely her group’s making, and Derek Miller just kept bringing the noise. The dynamic between these two was weird at best to watch, and Krauss admirably tried to ramp up a lack of music-making on stage by launching herself off it multiple times. Hardcore, sure. But these guys need to do more if they’re to survive in a festival setting. They should take some tips from Art Vs Science, who have graduated to semi-headliner status and absolutely destroyed their set, as they have been doing now for almost two years.

For distortion with a reputation, almost everyone bailed on Aeroplane and Public Enemy to converge on the mainstage for Busy P’s golden boys, Justice. Though they haven’t really done anything except buy new leather jackets and smoke more cigarettes since the release of their genre-defining and Catholic-baiting Cross album of 2007, the Ed Banger Frenchmen were in fine form, giving those of us who can remember a time when MSTRKRFT and Mr Oizo ruled the roost plenty to chew on. Beginning with ‘Genesis’, flying through their most notable remixes and going out on a high note with T.Rex’s ‘Get It On’, Justice secured their names as headliners and gave Fuzzy the prestige that had been severely lacking from other DJs during the day. The sound was perfect, the crowd salivating and you’d be forgiven for thinking Daft Punk never existed. Everyone goes home with their ears bleeding, and that’s exactly what you’d want from a festival like Field Day. The 48 Hours of Fuzzy have officially ended for another year, and despite some false starts, it remains the massive success it was always going to be.

Jonno Seidler

(Pics: Gavriel Maynard)