Review: Unsound Adelaide, Day One

While the acts are always varied they all share one trait: volume. Sound is centre-stage and very loud at every Unsound. Earplugs are handed out at the door for all attendees. First cab off the rank in the marathon 6-hour showing of acts was Tralala Blip, the only Australian band of the evening. While so many Unsound acts are defined by the mood created combining a light show with their music, Tralala Blip is fully focussed on sound, with only a large projection screen behind them, and its five members gathered around a desk of digital instruments. They are as eclectic as their music, which eschews complex melodies for simple ones with layer upon layer of modified vocals. Squeals, ticks, hums and blips accumulate as the band plays through a series of ethereal sounding songs, many of which are particularly catchy. Overall, Tralala Blip are a solid opening act, and ready the audience for what welcome weirdness is to come. SUMS is next, a collaboration between Mogwai’s Barry Burns and electronic producer Kangding Ray (France). This is the only act of the evening to feature traditional live instruments, those being a bass guitar, double bass and drumkit. These are blended with keyboard synths and an array of other digital tools. Post-rock and electronica blend over SUMS’ performance, which runs for about an hour of unbroken music, soaring between epic foreboding swells that would sound quite at home as a film soundtrack, to more contemplative and slower jams. Unfortunately Alessandro Cortini of Nine Inch Nails fame, who had been billed as a top act at Unsound, was forced to pull out a week in advance of the show. He was replaced by Babyfather, the latest alias of prolific UK musician, Dean Blunt. In anticipation of Babyfather’s set the room fills with smoke to the point of not being able to see the stage. Audience members become silhouettes in the gloom and Babyfather bursts into life with ‘Meditation’, his most well-known collaboration with Arca. The crowd bops along, enjoying the performance and the smoke never dissipates. Dean Blunt strolls back and forth across the stage, only visible behind his veil from the very front of the crowd, and the intensity grows. Eventually the set becomes a utter barrage of sound. It feels aggressive, and is punctuated with the sounds of sirens, gun shots and other unsettling effects. After Babyfather’s set, the doors are thrown open to evacuate the smoke and the audience takes a break outside while Jlin sets up. Jlin, a producer from Indiana with a strong focus on the emerging footwork scene, brings the crowd back in to dance among some heavy, bouncing bass. All of the acts are loud and bass-driven tonight, but Jlin takes the cake for songs that will vibrate your molars. The room takes on a dark club-like feel with Jlin in control, and the audience delves head first into the high tempo, hypnotic and trancey footwork she puts out. Halfway through she is joined by Avril Stormy Unger, a highly expressive performance artist from India. The music steps back from the heavy grind it was before to allow Unger to dance within it, twirling, flexing and personifying Jlin’s beats. She becomes a focal point for the enraptured audience for the rest of the set. After another short break to cool off from Jlin’s hot shuffle, the audience returns for Kode9’s performance. Kode9 is another UK producer with his roots in the dubstep movement. Here he explores something nicely different in the experimental spiriti of Unsound tied together with elements of dubstep, lounge and electro. Like SUMS’ performance, Kode9’s is a continuous jam, taking the audience up into peaks and down through the troughs. On the screen behind him an animation created and navigated by Lawrence Lek plays where a drone flies through an enormous abandoned structure under an orange sky. The concept behind this is said to be a journey through a Nordic hotel while an apocalypse rages outside. The music and simulation combine well, and specific moments are timed perfectly, like the drone’s encounter with a grand piano as heavy keys drone through the speakers. We’re taken to adventurous adrenalin pumping heights, then back down to dreamy, wavy lows again and again. Finally, R.P. Boo comes to the stage to bring the audience back to the highly danceable footwork genre that Jlin introduced us to earlier in the evening, but which Boo has pioneered for years. Trippy tunes, lots of samples and a supersonic tempo bring this whole shebang home. A thinner crowd, having withstood the night’s bone-shuddering bass, dances out Boo’s set to the end. In the last year of David Sefton’s time at the helm of Adelaide Festival, it’s worth reflecting on the fact that this could be the final iteration of Unsound Adelaide. It has been a fascinating and challenging addition to the Festival’s lineup for the past few years, expanding its audience and content beyond theatrical fare into a realm of strange new sounds. If it does not return, it will be missed. 4 stars Unsound Adelaide took place at the Thebarton Theatre on Friday, February 27 and Saturday, February 28 adelaidefestival.com.au   Images: John Dexter