High And Dry

May was a pretty good month as far as music festivals went, don’t you agree? 02 Days of Freedom was a smashing success (a pity about the lopsided report that was published later, though) and gave electronic dance music fans something to rave about. And one week later, hip hop and electro fans had the XLive Music Festival, with headliner Missy Elliot generating the most buzz. Although promotions for XLive only truly began in late April, the turnout for the event was more than decent, with a reported 15,000 making their way up to Genting.

Spread across three stages – the main stage at the Arena of Stars, XL-Tronic and XLR8 – revellers lined up at the theme park at as early as 7.30pm, clearly eager to get some hardcore partying done. While getting into the venue proved to be an exercise in confusion, things were equally as blurry once in the venue. Partygoers were given neither a map nor a performance schedule, and were left on their own to figure things out. Finding the main stage and the XL-Tronic stage was easy enough as they were out in the open, but many were unaware of where XLR8 was. Worse, some didn’t even know there were three stages. It was a pity to see acts like Twilight Actiongirl, B4C and Goodnight Electric play to an almost empty crowd.

Over at XL-Tronic, things were a lot more festive with great sets by Filo & Peri, Marcus Schossow and Yoji. Factor in equally eye-catching graphics, it lived up to the crowd’s high expectations. Acts at the main stage like Maliq & D’Essentials, Al Haca and Parkdrive were fun to watch but everyone knew they were basically appetizers before the main course, even if that meant waiting for over an hour for her to finally appear.  The cheers were deafening when Missy came on and there were plenty of stage frills (pyrotechnics, illusions, excellent choreography) to keep the crowd distracted, but there was no thrill in her performance as she kept stopping her songs just before we were getting into it to interact with the crowd. Not that that’s a bad thing, but when you have 45 minutes, we don’t want to spend 30 minutes on banter. We wanted a show, something worth the winding drive up. But Missy, and XLive for that matter, fell short.

Text Sarah Chan Photo Didi Ramlan