The first day of March was a steamy one and on this day the green grass of Wellington Square was not so graciously defaced by thousands of pairs of feet. It was the day of Future Music Festival and it was clear that punters were planning to make the most of the next several hours. As eager attendees steadily swarmed the venue from the early hours of the afternoon, the impending evening of partying and trashiness started forming its structure – but with such an awesome line-up awaiting who could blame them for being amped? Five stages of cranking sets touching on almost all genres of electronic music, rides, food, drinks, dancing – fun!

Upon entry you were presented with four of the stages: The Yellow stage situated to the left was armed by locals Micah and Yummy Fur Sound System, however for most of the arvo, contained only a handful of the thousands.

Around from this was the Silent Disco, a new craze which substitutes speakers for lots and lots of headphones. During the day it quietly pumped out sounds from predominantly Aussie DJ’s. Whether it was to check out the selection of local talent, sample some international skills from DJ’s Sketch or D-Cypher, or perhaps it was just the sheer novelty of it all – a solid queue graced the entrance of the tent for a majority of the day.

Super 8 & Tab grabbed the attention of enough folk to form decent crowd at the Godskitchen stage. Their energetic house set carried across the lawn to the large shelter, where people lounged and enjoyed appropriate intro music to an evening of dance music galore.

Past the steamy, pulsating The Likes Of You tent was the massive bar area that had periods of good/slow/warm drink service through the day and provided an effective entry point for a mob of 20 kids to jump the fence – all but a couple succeeding entry. Further along the back was the raised V.I.P stand which would have had a perfect view over the audience to the Future Music stage.

Steve Angello and Sebastian Ingrosso of Swedish House Mafia warmed the main stage with a couple of hours of funky booty shakin tunes. Show Me Love by Robin S, And I Miss You by Sade and Daft Punk’s Around The World ignited a hubbub of dance in celebration of these popular club anthems. “We love you guys! We love your country! We love Australia!” one yelled to the crowd before finishing up, making way for following act N.E.R.D.

As Pharrell, Chad and Shay took over the stage, a final rush of people swarmed to the Future stage to check out the boys in the flesh and see if they rock out as hard as they do in their albums. After an intro that touched on all 3 albums, they unsuccessfully attempted trying to get the crowd to squat down, (those who did received strange looks from fellow audience members) before dropping into a really enjoyable set that covered a good range of their work. They sampled songs from their latest album Seeing Sounds including Sooner Or Later, Anti Matter and Everyone Knows and popular tracks from their second album Don’t Worry About It and She Wants To Move were definite highlights. Fans would have to have been pleased to hear the decent selection of tracks from first album In Search Of including Brain, Run To The Sun, Bobby James, Provider and Lapdance, though Rock Superstar was the undoubtedly the peak of the set.

Over at the Godskitchen stage the Guru of turn-tables Grandmaster Flash took over at 6:30 hitting the audience a monster mash-up of classic tracks and new samples of his latest album The Bridge. Not showing a hint of his age, his energy and jam packed set picked up the crowd and launched the evening into full swing. Dropping each song for only several bars tops, he teased hip-hop fans by hinting at many classic tracks with an intro before launching into the next party tune. Some southern rap, KRS One and Run DMC, before throwing in his own tracks from The Bridge and oldies White Lines and Jump On It. Keeping with old school were tracks by Chic, Dee-lite, ACDC, Lenny Kravitz and Blur. All that was in the first half hour! Proclaiming himself a pioneer of hip-hop he explained that he views all genres of music as hip-hop and from here kicked into a steady set containing a Dr Dre mash-up, Chilli Peppers mixed with Snoop, Nirvana, The White Stripes, Naughty By Nature, Beyonce, Notorious B.I.G, Kris Kross, Big L, M.O.P … and too many more. It was awesome!

Basement Jaxx are all about party music and the crowd drank in their funky beats, colourful costumes and the powerful voices of their singers. Performing most of their big hits including Good Luck, Where’s Your Head At and a ballad version of Romeo, the crowd was loose and liberated by the music. Not limiting their set to their own songs they dropped a few covers including Sex On Fire by Kings Of Leon.

Etienne De Crecy the famous DJ in a cube was dropping a thumping set to a sea of dripping stompers next door in The Like Of You Tent. The French house DJ plays in the heart of several plasma screens which form a 3D cube. The visuals displayed on the screen are designed to represent and compliment the music he’s playing – pulsating, traveling and rotating like a rubrics cube to the beat.

All up the day was a great one with some quality acts, great atmosphere and generally a good set up. If there was a slightly smaller attendance, slightly stronger breeze and people were slightly less toasted, it would have been awesome – but you can’t win them all.