Future Entertainment’s Summadayze in Melbourne has proved itself as a longstanding icon for bringing in the new year with sun, beats and plenty of babes. With its monster line up boasting the likes of Snoop Dogg, Moby, Calvin Harris, Scissor Sisters punters were spoilt for choice and with acts like Seth Troxler, Busy P, Markus Schulz and Pendulum, there really is ‘something for everyone’.
Despite Melbourne’s punishing heat, the crowd kept their spirits at a high pace throughout the entire day. The Pure Blonde Dome provided much welcomed air conditioned respite. Nevertheless, Melbourne duo Polyfonik quickly heated things up again with beefy edits of popular dance tunes and beats to keep the energy high throughout their entire set. Being home to a variety of local dance music talent it was great to see many of them out in force outside of their usual club gigs, including Next Generation featured DJs Tom Evans, Nick Young & Aaron Trotman, and Jamie Vlahos.
The V Energy tent was a pitch black hideaway with green lasers and fluoro body paint everywhere, reminiscent of Darkzone, or perhaps more like a mini Godskitchen with fist pumping electro house instead of hands-in-the-air uplifting trance. Marked with fluoro handprints on our bodies we head over to the Ojay stage, where we are instantly covered in masses of foam. The novelty wore off after about 5 minutes and punters seemed more excited by bubbles than the tunes, so we left.
Over at the Turqoise stage, Melbourne’s well represented trance fans gave their unwavering support to popular festival regular and man behind Majik, Papa Smurf. Hearing the welcoming cheers of adoration to return guest and trance heavyweight Markus Schulz, it is easy to be infected with the trance fans’ passion and reverence for the music. Unfortunately, Schulz clashed with Snoop Dogg, and we decide to vacate Turqoise for Snoop, knowing we were to meet Schulz once again at the after party.
Arguably the most anticipated man of the day, revered hip hop head honcho and party master Snoop Dogg seduced and hypnotized the main stage into a Dogg frenzy. Songs like “Gin and Juice” had transformed the masses into wannabe Doggfathers, with “Sweat” and “Drop it like its hot” luring the crowd to dance like no act before him had. Finding myself singing along to “Young, Wild and Free”, there was no better way to describe the spirit of the crowd.
Calvin Harris was the other standout act of the day. Said simply, the energy during his set was a-mazing. Although my limbs were failing me after several hours of dancing, I couldn’t help but smile when I saw how the crowd reacted to tunes like “I’m not alone”, “Feel so close” and “We found love”. You may have heard those songs a million times before, but having thousands of people all singing along to the same lyrics, hands reaching to the sky, stomping and clapping, is a truly breath taking experience. With the creative visual effects and sound quality, there was smiles all round and it once again proved Summadayze as a well organized, ‘must see’ dance party.
With Future Music Festival only 2 months away, we can only anticipate the kind of sensory experience that Future Entertainment has in store for us.
Stealth Bomber