A love letter to the sounds of Summer: looking forward to Strawberry Fields 2025

It’s cold.

Regardless of where you are across Australia and Aotearoa/New Zealand, winter has finally set in. A lucky few friends are gallivanting across Europe and visiting some of the world’s most premier festivals. It’s getting easy to regret yearning for winter months, scarves and a break in the hecticness of summer.

Thankfully, we have summer at home, and it’s not all too far away.

Few festivals in Australia capture the energy and emotion of Summer quite like Strawberry Fields. Having just celebrated its 15th birthday, the festival is widely celebrated as one of the world’s best.

With Strawberry’s ballot for 2026 closing on Monday next week, it felt like an appropriate way to yearn for summer, in celebrating some of its best recorded (& experienced moments) of recent memory.

8PM on Saturday, the sun has set on Strawberry’s Widlands and the Butter Sessions Showcase is well underway on the Deep Jungle stage. DJ PGZ, an iconic Naarm/Melbourne-based DJ, recorded this set that day, which is a high-intensity, sample-heavy dive into what sets Strawberry’s more club-focused programming apart from the rest. Having just returned last year to Strawberry for an Ecstatic Mob takeover of Strawberry’s Beach stage, it’s easy to see that 2023 made an impression.

Speaking of that very takeover, Sunday can be a tough time for everyone on day three. The Murray River can prove to be a lifesaver in that same situation, however, and the day’s opener, a two-hour back-to-back by Bertie and Afrodisiac, was a saving grace to say the least. Soft, femme, hypnotic and high-energy all at once, this is a one-way ticket to fun in the sun.

This mix by CC Disco is the third thing on her SoundCloud, let that sink in for just a moment.

Only a year prior starting her iconic PBS show, this a timestamp for where one of Australia's most trusted and respected DJs came from and continues to thrive.

Last year’s live improvisational jam by Circle Of Live, a collaborative effort by Sleep D, Sebastian Mullaert, and Kuniyuki, was a truly transformative experience for those in attendance. Penned initially to be two and a half hours long, an unfortunate cancellation by dameeeela meant that the group of four continued jamming for an extra hour and a half. Four hours, four hours of some of the most incredible live techno and trance one could ever hear, perhaps never to be performed again. Truly, one you had to be there for, sorry.

It can be easy to forget that Strawberry started as a doof. It’s come a long way in its decade and a half thus far, and a focus on live music has meant that newer fans are likely not to realise the influence it's had over Australia’s electronic music community. This recording from Oliver Huntemann, German techno pioneer, is a perfect example of that influence.

Before Strawberry found itself in the Wildlands it now calls home, this writer was lucky enough to visit for its 2014 edition. Although a recording of this set, the first to inspire the aforementioned writer to consider the full potential of dance and electronic music truly, is sadly not available, this video interview with a younger Nightmares of Wax is. Slightly easier to follow than the chaotic Seth Troxler interview by the same crew.

Internationally renowned names meet blossoming locals, with this 2018 set by Naarm’s Pjenné being a perfect example of that. The artist, host of Passing Notes on PBSfm and founder of label Companion, has gone anywhere and everywhere in the seven years since this mix was recorded. Still bangs.

Gadigal Land/Sydney-based Moktar has had a huge few years, culminating most recently in a sell-out show at one of his hometown’s most prestigious venues, Carriageworks. In 2023, the artist was responsible for setting the sun at the Deep Jungle stage, with two hours of rhythms, percussion, and odes to his heritage now firmly etched as his signature.

At last year’s event, Stev Zar was a level of energy that punctuated early Saturday evening. Flanked by friends and dancers, her set was a bright, rejuvenating injection of positivity that was felt throughout the entire dance floor. This was Strawberry at its party best.

We're pretty sure that the idea of "stars aligning" was invented during this very set.

There are few people, places and sounds that go together as naturally as Wax'o Paradiso on a beach stage, and thank goodness there's proof.

Four hours is too short, if we're being completely honest.

For Theo Parrish to close Strawberry’s 15th birthday felt like it had to be the end of some story, or a movie freeze frame. In reality, appearances by artists like Theo have become an integral part of what Strawberry is and who it attracts. Artists will flock from all across the globe to experience it and offer up their expertise for the privilege. Theo Parrish’s close to Strawberry 2025 was precisely this: an infectious show of house music’s enduring legacy, primed and ready for audiences with varying familiarity.

As we look to Strawberry’s next instalment, it may be a tough act to follow, but one we feel confident in trusting them with.

-

Strawberry's Ticket Ballot is open for registration until 12PM on June 30. Round 1 of the ballot will be drawn on July 1.

Register for Tickets at strawberry-fields.com.au.

-

Jack Colquhoun is Mixmag ANZ's Managing Editor, find him on Instagram.