FOMO came correct to Parramatta Park at the weekend and we’re still buzzing. Now in its third year running, the festival saw an incredible lineup hit Brisbane, Adelaide, Sydney and Melbourne this year to help punters get their freak on with one stage, zero clashes and zero worries.
We breezed in just in time for Tourist to take the stage. The UK producer has been a festival staple in Australia over the last couple of years, having completed a run with Laneway Festival last year and returning recently for a string of events across both sides of the country. His buoyant brand of electronica swept out across the valley and kicked things off in an awesome wave.
Next up, TDE It Girl SZA ignited the crowd with a brief but electric performance. Her 2017 debut Ctrl stole the hearts of damn near everyone who had one, and with her live band in tow, she belted out pure favourites including The Weekend, Supermodel and Kendrick collab Doves In The Wind.
The legendary Post Malone shortly followed to an absolutely ecstatic reception. Motioning toward the audience, someone threw him a rank, muddy sneaker and he proceeded with his signature shoey move that we clearly couldn’t start the show without. His loveable personality shined through in his on-stage banter between hits like Rockstar, White Iversion, Candy Paint and Congratulations.
A sweet sunset slot from Kaytranada took us smoothly into the night. His deck was hidden behind a wall of LED lights with a GoPro perched on top to capture all of his quirky jives. His rework of Flume track Sleepless had the crowd in a frenzy.
Onto a pounding set from ZHU, the California based producer let rip track after banging track, including a dope edit of Michael Jackson’s Thriller which spared no one’s butts from grooving.
Finally, a wicked closing set from RL Grime was looming, pyrotechnics and all. Opening with the utterly dystopian 2017 single Era, we lost a firm grip on our minds before the fire balls had even kicked in.
If you didn’t attend this bootylicious spectacle, check all of the action below, and make sure you head out next year. We’re already thirsty for what 2019 will bring.
Tourist
SZA
Post Malone
Kaytranada
ZHU
RL Grime
Photos: Dani Hansen/Howl & Echoes
Say NO to clashes and let your summer festival experience be epitomised by this absolutely delicious lineup brought to you by FOMO.
Returning for it’s third year running, the ever-expanding dance festival is bringing Kaytranada, ZHU, Post Malone, SZA, Tourist, The Kite String Tangle, Drezo, Stööki Sound, Nina Las Vegas, and Dena Amy together for one day of pure sensory overload next January, all with mastermind RL Grime taking the helm.
The deflation of Future and Stereosonic has left some room to groove in the dance festival sector, and FOMO has responded in sweet delight. Having kicked off in Brisbane last year with some eye-watering acts on the bill, they expanded to Sydney and Adelaide for their sophomore round, and 2018 is their biggest yet with the introduction of FOMO by Night in Melbourne.
If the one day, one stage, no clashes deal doesn’t quite swing it, Sydney and Adelaide punters can also opt for a payment plan to pay off their ticket in installments. There it is; literally no reason not to get in on this red hot action.
Tickets are on sale now and are selling fast. ¡Vamos!
Read our FOMO Adelaide 2017 review!
Top image: Mitch Lowe
When the opportunity to review FOMO Festival came up I had the option of travelling to Adelaide or Sydney. I had never attended a music festival in the South Australian capital and was keen to see how it compared to other cities. A week before the festival Empire Of The Sun were forced to pull out due to flight issues and Slumberhaze were also unable to attend this leg of the festival, but that didn’t stop Adelaide punters heading out for a day of electronic and hip-hop music.
Arriving in Adelaide I checked the weather reports, which said things like ’43 degrees’ and ‘Avoid outdoor activities’, good thing I was going to a music festival. Arriving at the Adelaide Gaol, I noted how small the setup for the festival was inside the space. It really felt like a boutique festival in a major city, a nice change from the usual hectic pace that comes with touring festivals. DJ Hannah Wants was spinning onstage as a small crowd of hardcore partiers vibed along with her deep house beats. Many punters planted themselves under trees or in the shade, attempting to escape from the oppressive heat.
Photo: Facebook
Desiigner announced his arrival to the stage with his trademark ‘BRRAAAAP’ which sent punters running to the stage. The Brooklyn rapper opened with his New English mixtape’s lead track Caliber. Whilst the energy was there, and fans were keen to see one of G.O.O.D Music’s newest signees in the flesh, it was disappointing to see how little he rapped live. During Freestyle 4 he really brought the heat, smashing his guest verse, but when the moment came for major key tracks Timmy Turner and Panda (which he performed three times) Desiigner spent more time ad-libbing and making noise as the backing track rapped for him. Festival goers seemed unbothered by this though and hyped along.
Local George Maple swaggered onto stage, with a complete shift in tone and energy. A real strength of FOMO Festival was the diverse nature of the acts. Maple brought her signature sound of dark r’n’b flavoured with bass heavy beats. ‘Thank you for coming out to see me when it’s so hot, I really appreciate it!’ she said as security guards hosed the mosh in front of her.
Photo: Facebook
Tech problems marred GoldLink‘s set, as his DJ’s decks wouldn’t play the song correctly. Launching into his set in spite of this, a professional through and through, he soldiered on performing tracks from his latest project And After That, We Didn’t Talk to a crowd mixed of diehards and people keen to check out new music. I caught GoldLink at Laneway 2016 in Melbourne and the crowd was a similar size, why are people sleeping on one the best talents in the game right now?
Conversations with punters at the bar hinted that many people may not be familiar with the hip-hop acts on the bill and had chosen to come along for the electronic acts instead. Closing his set with his Kaytranada/AlunaGeorge collaboration TOGETHER, he was hit again with further tech problems but made the most of it and finished the song a capella, showing off his formidable flow.
Metro Boomin’ was the next act on the bill and presented an interesting experience. Producers often don’t get the credit they deserve for the projects they make, and unless you’re a hip-hop fan you may not be familiar with Metro, one of the hottest producers in the game right now, but I guarantee you’ve heard his work. Seeing him spin live it struck me just how influential this young producer has been on the scene. Every song he dropped was hit after hit, punters who maybe were unfamiliar with his name came around quickly just hearing his vast body of work.
Blending with other hip-hop bangers, Metro Boomin’ was a highlight of the festival and easily a crowd favourite. Towards the end of his set he announced ‘I got to work with one of my idols last year, can I do a few tracks from that album?’, there were raucous cheers of excitement, knowing what was coming. In quick succession he dropped FML, Waves, Facts (Charlie Heat Version) and Father Stretch My Hands Part.1 all from Kanye West’s latest release The Life of Pablo. A perfect way to close a set.
Photo: Facebook
British grime talent JME was an interesting choice for the festival. Often described solely as ‘Skepta‘s brother’ (despite making solid music in his own right), it was really interesting to see how grime has been taking off and resurfacing around the world, very much thanks to JME’s label Boy Better Know. I was sadly a little disappointed by his performance though. Maybe it was the crowd just weren’t feeling it, or the hype from Metro Boomin’ was too hard an act to follow, but it felt like the energy dipped. Even heavy hitters Man Don’t Care and That’s Not Me (one of the best releases of 2016) seemed to fall flat. I’m saying it now though, don’t sleep on JME. Go check out his 2015 album Integrity> and let the grime goodness into your lives.
Shifting the genre back into electronic were Peking Duk, introduced by David Hasselhoff, and teasing their mega hit with Nicole Millar High from the very top of the set, the crowd was whipped into a frenzy by the Canberra electronic duo. With insane drops and grooving melodies married with killer visuals and lights, Peking Duk showed Adelaide why they are two of the darlings of the Australian music scene. Current hit Stranger went off and by the looks of this performance, plus FOMO’s cheeky promo of the single when it was #3 on the charts, the Duk may have another number one on their hands.
Photo: Facebook
Headliners Flosstradamus were easily the most hyped artists of the festival. Each person that approached me, chatted to me in the crowd and at the bar talked about how keen they were to catch them for the last time, the band announcing their separation earlier (though Curt Cameruci will continue to perform under the Flosstradamus moniker though). Blending remixes and originals, they brought the house down and were a perfect closer to the Adelaide leg of FOMO.
Hot, sweaty and tired from a day of partying hard people began heading home or kicking on to various after parties showing that Adelaide can party as hard as Melbourne or Sydney.
Image: Facebook
With barely any time to recover from a Godzilla-sized hangover courtesy of this year’s edition of Falls Festival, this Saturday just gone in Brisbane saw the very auspicious debut of FOMO Festival, showcasing some of the very best EDM and hip hop from both these shores and internationally. Howl got right in amongst it all and came out the other side incredibly happy because of:
5. Another summer festival in Brisbane!
Laneway aside, Brisbane is notoriously starved of good music festivals in the summertime. After the very embarrassing public RIP-ing of this year’s Soundwave festival, as well as the tragedy of last year’s Stereosonic, the status of summer festivals not just in Brisbane but around the country is kind of up in the air at the moment. It was incredibly refreshing then to see the very first FOMO not only step up to the plate to fill a bit of that hole, but to knock it out of the park.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TP9luRtEqjc
Saturday at Riverstage may have been hotter than the Seventh Circle of Hell (probably), but everyone from Brisbane in attendance was more than happy to stew in their own sweat for an afternoon of ripper music that they didn’t have to travel two hours south to soak in. Fingers crossed FOMO gets the 2017 sequel we all want.
4. Dat crowd though
I’m the first to admit I’m not a huge fan of EDM by any means, and have never dared attend a festival like Future Music or the aforementioned Stereo before. I’ve also heard EDM crowds can be an um… interesting sort… to the usual rock and hip hop crowds I usually find myself jostling with.
That said though, 99.9% of the people in attendance at FOMO were actually really good people, pretty much par for the course at any Australian music festival. Even despite the sweltering heat and the subsequently huge increase in alcohol consumption as evidenced by the gigantic lines at the bar, not a shred of violence was seen all day, some small comfort after the tragic death of Cole Miller from a coward punch rocked the same city to the core not even a week ago.
Not only well-behaved, but as someone attending FOMO by themselves for a good portion of it, many of the fashion choices provided a hilarious way to pass the time alone between sets. Speed dealers were in abundance, as were legionnaire hats taking me all the way back to little lunch at primary school. Shouts out to the dude in the ‘Where’s Molly’ parody shirt and the two dudes riding around on inflatable dinosaurs. Not a single Native American headdress either! Something that greatly restored my faith in this city and its humans. Not to mention the crowd going from 0 to Judgement Day in about three seconds for RL Grime.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=04ufimjXEbA
Pat yourselves on the back, FOMO crowd.
3. Tkay Maidza caps off a massive year with a bang
After a huge 2015 spent touring and breaking the bloody hell out, it looked like a nevertheless fresh as a daisy Adelaide MC Tkay Maidza taking to the stage early in the afternoon to spit a few rhymes our way.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yFHCkghw7yY
Having caught her in full flight festival live mode at last year’s Splendour In The Grass, she didn’t disappoint for a second. Tkay used every inch of Riverstage despite the diabolical heat, dropping bangers like M.O.B. and Ghost left and right and getting everyone in the very sweaty pit stomping their feet like Brontosauruses to the point of needing a lie down after she was done. She signed off with a very gracious thank you and is evidently taking a well-deserved couple months break to work on her album.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=f5gWvsedqtc
We’re hanging out for it here. Cheers for all the hard work, Tkay
2. Flight Facilities soar into the night sky
Another national act we were fortunate enough to get funky with at last year’s Splendour were the unfathomably entertaining Flight Facilities. Taking on a most challenging slot sandwiched in between a fantastic Jamie xx and the eventual earthshaking headliner RL Grime (seriously, I’m shocked there’s any survivors still a Riverstage standing after RL), it was Flight Facilities who stole the show for me, perhaps because theirs is a body of work I’m much more familiar with than the other two.
Indeed, as the sun mercifully went down on FOMO and the horrendous heatwave turned into a very welcome balmy summer’s eve, Double-F brought the synth pop cool in with the dusk and blew everyone to smithereens.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zFaUOHe2UDY
Collaborator Owl Eyes was absolutely on fucking point and hypnotised the crowd throughout, the gorgeously bouncy Heart Attack a huge highlight, as were a mega-sized Crave You and the stormy, goosebump-giving set-closer Clair De Lune. The kind of magnificent set you would expect from an act who had as big a 2015 as any other Australian artist. They soared all of last year on the wings of late 2014 debut LP Down To Earth, we’re all eagerly anticipating whatever comes next.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Jcu1AHaTchM
1. Skepta shuts FOMO down
Holy snapping ducks, I’m still reeling from the knockout blow that was Skepta’s absolutely festival-thieving set. Not giving one fuck that the FOMO crowd may have started crashing a little hard against the weight of the heat and humidity, the Tottenham grime lord demanded nothing but peak energy for the entirety of his set and largely got it from a soon frenetic crowd.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dyONbqggasY
In return, Skepta rewarded us all by raining down utter neck-breakers like That’s Not Me, I Spy and Back Then all leading to, after spending a good couple of minutes ensuring the size of one circle pit was to his liking (huge), a gargantuan, firebreathing rendition of one of the hardest-hitting songs of the year gone in Shutdown.
I still haven’t regained all of my mobility after thrashing around like an absolute lunatic to this one. Disconcerting as it may have been afterwards to reflect on the fact that several thousand largely white Australian 20-somethings were screaming lyrics about Haile Selassie and what it means to be a real Rastafarian right back at Skepta, it was nonetheless a barnstormer and really charged the crowd up for the evening ahead.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MQOG5BkY2Bc
Criminally short at a bare 30 minutes, and coming up shy in the sheer anarchy department that was RL Grime (where FOMO went from 0 to the apocalypse in about three seconds), I still challenge you to find me a better set at FOMO. Go on-en!?