Review: Strawberry Fields was a perfectly curated escape hidden deep in the bush

Daniel Avery - Wildlands, Friday

The lighting at the main stage was restrained on Friday night in favour of a soft glow. The music certainly wasn’t, though, with Daniel Avery dishing out two hours of techno to follow Optimo, accented with his own productions Naïve Response and Water Jump from 2013’s ‘Drone Logic’, which carried on the breeze throughout the surrounding plains with its tribal-style female vocal. Heavier cuts included Slam's ‘Vapour,’ ‘Vortex’ by Matrixxman & Setaoc Mass and the Planetary Assault Systems remix of Phil Kieran’s ‘Wasps Under A Toy Boat.’ Layers of intrigue were built with ‘Himmel Und Erde’ by Obscure Shape & SHDW, out on Rekids, as the thunderous bass and a purple hue emanated from the stage.

Pelvis - Wildlands, Saturday

If a perfect cut of jazzy, deep house and an ice-cold beverage can’t sort you out mid-morning on day two of a festival, you’re in trouble. We wandered down to the main stage feeling good to kick start Saturday with 2017-dominating Mall Grab on from 12pm, and it was our August cover star’s friends in Sydney/Melbourne collective Pelvis who hit home early with us, moving through ‘Cosmique Arab’ by Boyz in the Oud and ‘All the Same Family (Mr Onester Original Mix)’ by Lee Rodriguez before dropping Mark Seven’s ‘The Fatal Flaw In Disco (U-4-Ria)’ with their very last track. Pure vibes as the sun shone and the crowd began to fill out front and centre ahead of a set of raw house from Mall Grab, who created an early main stage frenzy.