Live Review: Harbourlife

Cheap perfume, sweat, and fake tan permeated the air at Harbourlife.

Festival-goers weaved up the path to Sydney’s iconic Fleet Steps, to a single stage by the harbour. The atmosphere was all about the aesthetics: breathtaking, beautiful and boutique. The aesthetic priorities also lead to many poor choices of footwear – platforms confirming the prevalence of ‘90s-inspired ‘fashion’.

Leeds DJ Miguel Campbell may have set the bar a little too high with a 3pm set. His hip hop background was evident in his bouncy vibe, the sun gleaming off his gold chain as he glided along to the beat. There wasn’t one person sitting down as he mixed in Tomcraft’s Loneliness. A sea of bellies, bum cheeks and backs remind everyone how much they’ve missed the festival season.  The Music met with Campbell after his set. He says he loves Sydney, “The best thing [about Sydney] is the people… and look at that backdrop man.”

It was a seamless changeover between Miguel Campbell and Mark Farina: both in sound-transition and stage presence, they nodded in respect to one-another as the crown of headphones was handed over. He was as chilled as a cucumber – geekishly reminiscent of Jemaine Clement from Flight Of The Conchords. He dropped a sexy house version of Senorita Bonita and the guy next to me confessed that Farina’s name on the bill had “brought him out of festival retirement”. Farina’s entertainment and technical expertise is hard to follow, this was made obvious by the next set from Lee Foss.

The crowd begged for Foss’s attention but he seemed indifferent, casually sipping Grey Goose from the bottle. The music was on a slow incline that feels too minimal, a unanimous response as the crowd self-consciously tether on disjointed beats.

Twenty-year-old Thomas Jack takes the decks reeling in his fellow Gen Yers by dropping the theme song to ‘90s TV show Round The Twist. Familiar samples weave through deep house bass lines like Missy Elliott’s Pass That Dutch – proving he did his homework to please the crowd. The volume is lower than in previous sets, a decision that captures the detail in the music. He looked confident on the decks, each movement and response giving him pleasure. The crowd’s attention is diverted to a drone camera flying low overhead, so Jack dropped Bob Marley’s Could You Be Loved bringing sweat-sheened faces back towards him as the sun goes down. Next up is another young blood: Norwegian-based Kygo.

Bubbles blew off the stage and floated out in a cadence in time with the waves. Kygo moved his hands to direct the bubbles -- and a sea of bikini-clad women on shoulders -- to move in time. Some held homemade signs: they ‘need and want’ Kygo’s ‘sexual healing’. It was a slow start, 25 minutes into his set he realised his self-indulgent track choices and won back the crowd dropping ZHU’s Faded, Vance Joy’s Riptide and Gnarls Barkley’s Crazy. It was a fairly inconsistent set, but had its moments of redemption.

London duo Dusky play from 8pm. It’s a mainstream deep house sound, but it’s flat and not interactive, their presence and sound is repetitive. Lights emanated from the stage mirroring a blue-light disco. It slowly changed to dark and dirty beats but with no lyrical overtones, people only momentarily receptive before it takes a shove into quasi-Trance. A girl from the crowd jumped on stage and starts dancing, the security seemed unfased by her.

Headliners Classixx ended the night in a similar manner to their two predecessors. A staggered set prompted people to leave prematurely in the lull period of the first half. They dropped some down-tempo floor-fillers, which sounded hollow and had more of a play in the outros than the climatic parts of the track. Nonetheless, ‘80s clanger Pump Up The Jam prompted platformed feet to dance aerobically. Classixx closed out Harbourlife 2014 with a remix of Peking Duk ft SAFIA’s track Take Me Over, so no one could leave with a bitter taste in their mouth.

The sold out festival tapered off in its second half, with Miguel Campbell and Mark Farina perhaps setting the standard too high, and too early.