JPEGMAFIA

I arrived halfway through the set, but Peggy delivered an energetic performance focused primarily on his vocals. The music was performed just as enthusiastically as it has been on his studio albums. He performed songs mainly from his latest album, All My Heroes Are Cornballs, and some hits from his breakthrough album, Veteran.

Slowthai

I thoroughly enjoyed Slowthai’s Nothing Great About Britain, and he put on an equally impressive show. He was great at stirring the crowd into moshes. He seemed to have an eccentric yet friendly persona on stage. He brought out Denzel Curry for the song, ‘Psycho’, and dove into the crowd.

Denzel Curry

Denzel was my favorite performer of the festival—he had an unmatched energy and was able to rap fast, articulately and energetically as he hopped around the stage and into the crowd. His delivery was spot-on from bops like ‘Black Balloons’ to catchy songs like ‘Speedboat’ to punk covers like ‘Bulls on Parade’. The crowd lost it when he brought out Slowthai for a second performance of ‘Psycho’.

6lack

My favourite part about 6lack’s set was the live drummer he had to drum the instrumentals of his songs, and the chemistry between the two of them. It was a good change of pace from all the moshing and jumping of the past three sets. However, his delivery seemed effortless and unanimated.

ScHoolboy Q

Q was 15 minutes late so he ended up performing fewer songs than he usually would. As a huge fan and someone who’s been following Q’s work for years, I thought the performance was somewhat underwhelming and lacking in breadth from his discography. Most of the songs and verses he performed were from his commercial releases so he ended up letting the audience do a lot of the singing.

Diplo

Diplo was the first electronic performance I saw at the festival. His set involved short, snappy compilations of personal work and remixes of commercial songs. I really liked the multimedia aspect of his performance—not too different from the format of videos you’d see at an EDM concert, but still uniquely depicting Diplo’s aesthetic.

Flume

Flume donned the persona of what seemed to be a beat scientist, conducting experiments on his music on stage—bouncing from avant-garde experimental cuts to catchy commercial songs like ‘Never Be Like You’. He was also breaking things, welding and graffitiing on stage—his concert was a fascinating mix of live performance and theatrics. He brought out several guest artists, such as Vera Blue and JPEGMAFIA, to perform songs with him. I liked that he had multiple cameras on stage so the crowd can see the live, improvisational work he was doing during his performance—you don’t get to see that degree of liveness in most electronic music performances, where so many DJs have queued playlists and hands up in the air most of the time.

The Festival Overall

The festival atmosphere, even though fairly crowded and littered with moshing across the different concert venues, was friendly and appreciative of the performers. The line-up was eclectic and gave lesser-known rappers and DJs a stage to perform for an international crowd. The larger venue, Centennial Park, was accessibly close to the city, and the transport to and from there didn't seem hectic. The stages were set close to each other yet distant enough for the sound from a concert to not pour into the next one. I thought that it was a great experience for any music fan, and I'd recommend that fans of next year’s line-up definitely head along.