Photos by Thom, KS Digital media

Written by Steven Foster

What a way to kick off the 2017 festival season (for those of us in Australia). With a sold out even, Listen Out Perth was the talking point over the weekend. Rain definitely didn’t stop the crowd from having a solid time. The event featured huge international headliners as well as incredible local Aussie artists.

I had the pleasure of attending the Perth leg of the tour at HBF Lakelands. It was the 2nd year the event has been held that the venue. The one-day festival included artists such as Duke Dumont, FUTURE and local legends PNAU, What So Not, Safia and Vallis Aps.

With Listen Out usually being the first major festival of the Australian season everyone always brings great vibes. I really enjoyed the setup with two main stages reasonably close yet far enough to not have noise clashes. Also what was good was the new third bass stage. It was a good little get away from the main stages if you wanted a little less crowd to chill out and rest those dancing wheels.

One thing that could have been improved would have been the entry to the event was way too small and couldn’t handle a large number of attendees, with the average wait time to enter was nearly 30-40 minutes which was nearly a whole set. Doubling the size of the entry would have made things run a lot smoother. Also apart from the music itself, there was nothing really to do. After recently coming back from Europe and seeing the way things are run there, it was a bit disappointing. Also, a few complaints from the locals was to be expected as the noise could be heard from all over town but in saying that, they were never going to please everyone.