Performing at Pyramid Rock 2010

Phillip Island's New Year's Eve camp-out festival takes the grooviest of all possible routes into 2011, with a lineup big on beats and rampant with rhythm — jetting in from the U.S. at the top of the bill is Pharrell and his guitar-skewed dance outfit, N.E.R.D., setting the balance between sand-blasted riffage and heroic hip-hop on "Rock Star." Chromeo demands that you bust a bunch of moves with the Moog-riding squelch-fest "Fancy Footwork" — the title track on the Canadian dance-meisters' excellent second album — Midnight Juggernauts capture electro-starlight in a bottle on "Shadows," and the Temper Trap soars on the sonic thermal of "Sweet Disposition."

The Finn family line extends out to Phillip Island, in Next Steps.

The 2010 Pyramid Rock lineup revels in a rich eclecticism here, as elements of rock, rap and dance escape their confines and bleed across generic lines: Urthboy lays his rhymes over a mellow, lightly funked, new wave groove on "We Get Around," one of the standout singles released from 2007's The Signal, Gypsy & the Cat — the Melbourne-formed duo (Xavier Bacash and Lionel Towers) with links to London — create an exquisite mesh from synth and acoustic threads on "Human Desire," and Liam Finn overlays a delicate percussive tangle with shimmering flashes of guitar on "Second Chance" from his 2007 solo debut, I'll Be Lightning.

If you fancy some Welsh noise, chilled-out dub, or local rock chicks . . . head to Deep Cuts.

The wind blows something fierce at Pyramid Rock, but whatever Mother Nature throws at the bands, they're well equipped to answer back with interest, especially in the case of Triple J Unearthed High discovery act Stonefield, an alliance of sisters who rock like mothers — check out "Through the Clover" — and Welsh noise-mongers Future of the Left, whose incendiary "Arming Eritrea" opens up 2009's Travels With Myself and Another and guarantees scar tissue for your eardrums. Transporting us to a dubby space are Melbourne's Red Eyes ("Higher Ground"), while Koolism brew up a potent hip-hop stew with "Can't Stand It" from 2010's tightly packed The 'Umu.

With the memories of a storm-lashed 2009 Pyramid Rock Festival confined to the rear-view mirror, the 2010/2011 event is set for phoenix-like triumph — a lineup this strong is practically capable of controlling the natural world, especially when you've got the undisputed hip-hop authority of Arrested Development alongside the contemporary scene-making and tone-setting of N.E.R.D. and the ecstatic cloud-surfing of the Temper Trap. As ever, there's a ton of variety on offer, so you can pick out a mellow moment from Lightspeed Champion or Xavier Rudd, crank it up till your bones ache with Tumbleweed and Sweden's Shout Out Louds, or boogie like a nightcrawler to Miami Horror and Tinie Tempah. Like the Egyptians said, if you build it, they will come. We give you: Pyramid Rock 2010.