Last year, Sklounge at the National Museum provided ample opportunity for music lovers, art-heads and others aswell, some a combination of the two, to enjoy a great atmosphere with crazy amounts of stimuli for the eyes ears and mind, (and the nose, too. WHAT was that smell!?). And yes, you guessed it; it is back, with a fantastic line up for each Friday in February. Last week was the first one, (featuring Calico and The Herd), and I was asked to go and review it. So, I did. Observe.

My entrance into the “Garden of Dreams” was quite dream-like indeed, with the summer sky still retaining some of the day’s light to cast on odd twilight, and calico laying down some very atmospheric music. Don’t let the innocent, boy-next-door charms fool you, as this guy has got more than his share of weirdly wonderful records. He chose to set the mood with some instrumental, drum heavy hip-hop sprinkled with beautiful, wistful samples. I nodded my contentment, and wandered off to get myself a glass of red (they had decent wine, too!) and sit on the hill all alone, as none of my friends were in sight. This was a blessing in that it let me sit and soak up the surrounds a little. In addition to calico’s melancholy boom-bap, there were several things for one to look at. Glowstick twirlers provided some eye candy for the punters, however I am not sweet of eye and much preferred to look at the projection screen, which was showing fucked up images of lizards and such.

Calico moved on from his current steez to lay down some jazzier tunes and some more straight up vocal led hip-hop. The jazzy stuff, with luscious saxophone and smooth drums seemed to please the crowd a lot, with the whole hill in the center a mass of heads nodding in unison. All in all, the sets were great, yet subtle, and well suited to the evening, and after a hearty applause for calico it was time for the animations, which are compiled from all around the globe. I’ll admit some of the animations I had seen at Skylounge last year disappointed me. While all showed talent, many got bogged down in pretentiousness, or to be succinct, wankery. Not so tonight, with some thoroughly amusing and captivating short films to watch. All of them were good, however Jonathon Nix’s entry (I forget the title) was undoubtedly the crowd favourite. A dirty, sketchy design acted as the backdrop for a story of a boy with a tape deck for his head, who has to overcome his problem of missing out on asking out the girl he likes, as he can never get the tapes loaded into his head in time to say what he wants to say. It was in turns funny and sad, and very rewarding, and I applaud Jonathon Nix for making something truly remarkable.

After the animations, calico provided us with a brief interlude, once again dropping some really fresh stuff, this more on a faster, stutter-drum electronica kind of vibe. The crowd began to swell and after we’d said our goodbyes to the man, Sydney heroes The Herd came onstage, and that it was their aim to tear it up was evident. I’ll just say, as I think it matters, that a while back I managed to see The Herd about 4 times in a bit over a month, and was not anticipating enjoying it as much as I should tonight. The time that had gone past since then surely played a part, but it was actually a really great set and I enjoyed it very much, which is a credit to them for keeping it fresh. The great thing about The Herd is that the live instrumentation, funky between-song jams can, and do, go down. After a fantastic rendition of their track “States of Transit”, they did just that, with a very cool beatbox/guitar concoction which the crowd lapped up eagerly.

MC’s Ozi Batla and urthboy as usual owned the stage. Urthboy prowled and leaped around like a little kid whilst Ozi led the way with his lovable, scruffy ruffian antics. And if you didn’t know, act like ya did: These boys can rap with the best of ‘em. As usual, the crowd favourite was “77%”, and with good cause. It owns. After going through this and other popular tracks like the riot inciting “Burn down the parliament”, they moved onto some rarer heard stuff like “Starship Troopers”, a brilliantly ambient piece with ferocious basslines that had everyone moving. Aussie hip-hop is alive and well my friends. Trust me.

Wow. As I’m sure you can tell it was a fantastic night out and all I talked to afterwards agreed. When you have music this fantastic, and it is but a stitch in the tapestry, you’ve got something pretty special. I can’t recommend strongly enough that you make an effort to see whatever you can of the next three Skylounges. I know I will!