I had previously been to the Gaelic club a few times, this time round Meem was performing as part of his national tour promoting his new album, ‘The Big Hoo-Hah’. It is amazing what a bit of decorating and a different crowd can do for the feel of a venue, the Gaelic club was the warmest and most inviting I’ve seen it. The sound was miles ahead of previous parties I’ve been in attendance as well.

As per standard, I was running late and sadly missed Alphatown’s live set. All accounts I heard said they were excellent, with what is becoming for them, a trademark sound of chord-driven melodic tech. From what I have seen previously these guys are really going from strength to strength and I’ll be sure not to miss them again.

I did not however miss out on Meem’s live set. He was set to play both a DJ and live set and walking in I was immediately hit with a sense of warmth of sound and of tone. What I was hearing was a lot more accessible and danceable than his previous work album ‘Yum Yum & Miffy’. His current sound is definitely a lot more disco influenced with healthy slabs of funk. I was struck with a sense of Parliament and George Clinton with his music, something that is always going to be a good association in my books.

Meem comes across as an artist who has considerable personal attachment to his work and it was refreshing seeing him take obvious joy in the crowd’s energy and us in turn feeding off his. Everyone was a smiling dancing mass. It generally takes a considerable knowledge of an artists’ music to pick out individual tracks and I can’t boast such skills as I’m yet to purchase a copy of ‘The Big Hoo-Hah’. Limited edition copies are available at the moment, which instead of a hard plastic case, come in a cotton and felt CD pouch that closes with a button (and button hole, naturally).

Meem’s live performance was much like most electronic artists’ live sets- nothing much to look at. Visuals kept busy projected onto the back of the stage which were a collection of the little creatures that look like mini humanoid dinosaur/alien looking things which floated across the screen and also hung suspended in large form from the walls, roof and balcony. Long hanging sheets of red material was also draped from balconies and walls and a set of muted red lights completed the decorations creating a warm cosy feel to what is primarily a rock-feeling kind of venue. The sound was much warmer and bass heavy than it was been previously in the Gaelic with it often being slanted to piercing high-end sounds. The sound desk was definitely in tune on the night though with Meem’s bass-driven tracks smoothly riding on top of each other until he ended to Mark Walton starting to scratch over his last track.

Walton is someone I fail to see as much as I liked and continued with the funk and he took the crowd off in not an entirely different direction than Meem had left us. Slightly more breaky, and obviously through use of turntables- slightly more scratching. The weekend was quickly catching up with me at this stage yet the crowd seemed to be running along fine on smiles and good cheer. Meem followed up Mark Walton playing what I could guess is part of the music he uses for inspiration in making his own music, lots of funk and soulful music, lots of disco-influenced booty shaking tunes. Kurtis Blow made the obligatory showing and final track, the vocoder-led Dayton’s ‘Sound of Music’ summed up the night with it’s summery disco flow.

If Meem hadn’t cemented his place is Australian music previous to this, ‘The Big Hoo-hah’ will, and will prove to be one of the best Aussie releases this year.