Photo: Elleni Toumpas

The concept behind Round & Round is simple – it’s a demonstration that a festival need not be gigantic (and thus hard to navigate, crowded, and generally awful) to be successful. When I arrive at Round & Round, the crowd is pleasantly sparse, there are no massive lines for beverages, and the stages are well laid-out.

I Heart Hiroshima are somewhat incongruous in a line-up dominated by electro artists, but they play a tight set, opening with recent single Punks. It’s an impressive set, but they are obviously the wrong band for this crowd.

There’s a great deal of anticipation for Bumblebeez, but it’s misplaced – neither Chris Colonna nor his sister Pia can rap with any dexterity or sing in tune, and they are joined on stage by a drummer whose sole purpose, it appears, is to pretend to play the beats that are quite obviously coming from a backing CD. Their set hits its comic nadir when Chris heckles an audience member, calling him a ‘faggot with a small dick’. A truly terrible performance.

Owing to the poor schedule, Belgian duo The Glimmers only have a half hour set, but they cram some great tracks into it – Blondie, The Rapture, and SebastiAn’s remix of Killing In The Name Of all get a spin. A fantastic set – just a shame that it’s so short.

Midnight Juggernauts close the evening with a moving set. This is their first show in Australia since returning from a world tour, and it’s obvious that their live show has been polished by experience. They crack through material from their album Dystopia, including crowd favourites 45 & Rising and Shadows.

In the end, Round & Round is a success, but a qualified one – while the layout and limited ticketing worked wonders, the organisers could have improved it by ensuring artists kept to their set times, and by keeping the crowd abreast of line-up changes.

CHAD PARKHILL

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