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 Photo: Justin Edwards
“For those South East residents heading out for some weekend fun today, expect late afternoon showers and possible storms,” chirps the annoyingly false television weather girl. A collective sigh is heard as the threat of mud pits looms, but seekers of hedonism are still pumped for the début of Brisbane’s Global Gathering festival. It’ll be fine, there will be dance-floor mats…
The grass is still lush and untrampled as locals Mike Redfern vs. Fergus Alexander vs. bpm conjure a Sunday-in-the-park vibe at the Godskitchen stage. The trio thoroughly enjoy their performance and early bird festival-goers lay sprawled on the grass, absorbing the smooth beats.
Everyone out at the Future stage are keen for Above & Beyond to pump out some trance, though it begins to absolutely bucket down halfway through their set, sending half of the audience ducking for cover and the other half jumping around in the mud. Nothing quite like slipping over in the mud to Satellite, is there?
By now the crowd at the Godskitchen stage is sufficiently large to give Mag00 and Scott Walker the attention they deserve. The pair are held in high esteem by Brisbane electronic music aficionados, and it’s easy to see why as those present are treated to some deliciously bloopy, progressive sounds and heavy beats.
Larry Tee’s salt-and-pepper moustache and coke-bottle glasses make him an incongruously old-looking sight behind the Mashed stage, but he’s full of vitality as he pumps up the crowd with some tasty electro (after all, he did invent the term ‘electroclash’). The Soulwax mix of MGMT’s Kids goes down particularly well.
If the crowd hasn’t heard enough of the Anjunabeats catalogue after Above & Beyond – and it looks like they haven’t – Tydi has another couple of hours’ worth for the Godskitchen stage. A number of times during his set Tydi comes out from behind the decks to show his appreciation to the audience, who are enjoying the vocal trance on offer.
Continuing an unfortunately almost-to-be-expected theme of the day, The Potbelleez arrive onstage after Above & Beyond’s early departure as a slimmed-down, incongruous two piece. Sandwiched in between two of the international heavyweights on the Future Music stage, The Potbelleez’s unremarkable electro-house has its moments, however it only inspires inconsistent crowd reaction.
Representing the Ed Banger crew, cool-as-fuck Parisian producer Feadz rips through a superb set combining pumping electro, dirty Miami bass, booming hip hop and the occasional baile funk influence with ease. Obviously enjoying working the Mashed stage’s small crowd, Feadz takes several opportunities to play around with his sound.
Complete with Obama T-shirt, DJ Sneak follows up on the Ministry Of Sound stage, serving up a wide selection of house for the floor. Though the crowd is fairly modest, those that are there are enjoying the party, tribal and tech-tipped beats coming out of the sound system.
Felix Da Housecat spends roughly half of his time at the Future music stage cueing up crowd-pleasers (Daft Punk, Justice, Nirvana, and the track du jour, the aforementioned Soulwax take on MGMT), and the other half chatting to his peeps. Even if his mixing sometimes suffers from a lack of attention, the crowd laps it all up.
Thankfully there’s an exodus of silly people from under the MOS tent when Kid Kenobi & MC Shureshock finish their set, leaving lovers of real music to admire The Orb. The quartet use LPs, drums, and vocals to create an authentically live, deeply layered, and wonderfully old school performance of powerful sounds.
Minus any original members or creativity, the assorted ring-ins for the Gorillaz Soundsystem franchise bring to mind Krusty’s Klown Kollege from The Simpsons as an exercise in shameless money-making. The rotating cast onstage seem unable to stop their pointless shoutouts and superfluous accompaniments, sucking the enjoyment out of an otherwise serviceable, if disjointed, set of crowd favourites and Gorillaz visuals.
The half-an-hour-late Kazu Kimura defies his pre-festival remarks and produces a powerfully raw set of blasting beats. His attention to detail is awe inspiring but the incessant onslaught of sound is spoilt towards the set’s end when he introduces – for about ten minutes – a high frequency turbine build up that bursts many an eardrum.
Casey Spooner of Fischerspooner bounces onto the MOS stage with … well, either Warren Fischer has had a superb gender reassignment job, or it’s someone else. Sans the expected arty visuals, with Spooner phoning in some bored vocals, and with the mysterious non-Fischer DJ lady pumping out lukewarm electro, this set is a disappointment.
Closing out the Future stage, Sasha doesn’t appear to be suffering from the clash with Kraftwerk at all – there are plenty of witnesses to his long-awaited return to Brisbane. His silky prog set is nearly flawless; though at this time of night it seems like an anti-climax after some of the bangers that have taken place earlier in the day.
From the suspense building Kling Klang introduction to the first notes of The Man Machine and onwards, German techno-pop masters Kraftwerk amaze with an audio-visual spectacular of classics past and present. Although minus founding member Florian Schneider, Kraftwerk go through their oeuvre right back to 1974’s Autobahn with sense of vitality. As the curtains close, the unmistakable introduction to The Robots herald the Australian debut of Kraftwerk’s robot recreations of themselves, the robots moving in sync to the tune’s sped up techno reworking of the 1978 classic. A second encore of Boing Boom Tschak/Music Non Stop closes proceedings, providing an opportunity for the quartet to bid individual farewells.
So with another festival coming to a close, we take off our muddy shoes (those dance-floor mats never did show up …) and head for the showers. Today’s local version of Global Gathering certainly has weather in common with its big English brother, though, more importantly, it also shares the quality of music; after all, that’s why we’re going.
CHAD PARKHILL, TIM RETROT, ANDREW TUTTLE & SCOTT HARMS
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