Michael Mayer

Michael Mayer plays dance music that even people who aren’t too keen on dance music can get into. The Cologne based Kompakt label co-owner has an incredible sense of the difference between alienating and accessible in a DJ set and how these change from crowd to crowd. His prime-time set at the Bugged Out stage was a shining example of this ability. He rocked the at-capacity tent for an hour with an emotional music of music, mostly remixes of pop tunes and tracks with lyrics. Perhaps therein lies the secret to his DJing: whilst the guy can blow away a Panorama Bar crowd at 8am with obscure deep-house and techno, he also was able to gauge that a song-centric set was exactly what the crowd wanted at Field Day. The festival itself was so varied that his audience was made up of a range of music fans from indie-lovers to electro-heads to old school ravers. Tracks like Joris Voorn’s remix of Hot Chip’s One Life Stand and Stereogamous’ remix of LCD Soundsystem’s I Can Change got the most response and Mayer adjusted his set as so with other like-minded reworks and a few recent Kompakt singles. Things went a bit more towards the straight-ahead techno end of the spectrum, which perfectly set things up for Carl Craig to take the helm and get über-deep and serious with his 69 project.