A few weeks prior to My Disco’s return to the live setting in Melbourne, band members Ben Andrews and Rohan Rebeiro took their deep house side-project Kangaroo Skull to Brunswick’s Tinning Street Gallery. The smoke machine failed to perform that night, leaving a relatively weak mist to underlie the half hour of intense strobe-lighting to provide a complementary sensory overload. Tonight at The Toff, the efficiency of the smoke machine more than compensated for that night, with My Disco’s three members remaining completely absorbed within the opaque atmosphere contained onstage.
It’s been a long while since we’ve received anything in the way of new material from the minimalist punk trio, with the video (the band’s first) for Little Joy cut Turn being the only artefact put forth in the past two years. Rather than workshop newer material, the band took their existing canon and pushed everything to its logical extreme – contorting within the constraints of their pre-established body of work. Songs bled into and within each other, with the explosive intro to Young making for a teeth-gnashing, visceral delight. Paradise cut You Came To… pounded like an H-bomb production line in full force.
The aforementioned curtain of fog confounded what you might expect from a live set, with a centralised laser proving the extent of the show’s visual stimuli. The effect was compounded by an immaculate PA mix, with the kick drum pounding much like a filthy house beat underneath the storm of bass and guitar.
A seemingly perpetual drum solo proved to be a divisive factor on the evening. With the visual showiness of the feat nullified, the aural nuances were accentuated beyond reproach – the tonal variations of the sticks on the snare rim were explored with pristine clarity.
If tonight was an exercise in underlying, or manufacturing, the similarities between My Disco’s minimalism and repetition to that of the many strains of house, it was a resounding success.
The performance gave the audience the gift of the unknown, and in a time where we seem to know so much, it is truly something to cherish.
BY LACHLAN KANONIUK
LOVED: Young.
HATED: The residual tinnitus come Monday.
DRANK: Fog juice.
