It’s a big place, @Newtown. It can get kind of airy. So it’s a real pity that what could have been a great night, featuring two of Australia’s top beat making entities, Plutonic Lab and Hermitude, lacked in terms of atmosphere.

Codes Over Colours, Plutonic Lab’s highly-praised new album, was to get its Sydney launch with the Melbourne man in town. The promo said it was gonna be a bit of an early one, and not wanting to miss Elefant Trakers Hermitude, always good for a live set, we arrived a little early. Way too damn early. The huge hall featured a few pissed up young b-kids romping at the front (say two or three), so we sat at the side on the couch sipping our pricey stubbies, and soaked up the sounds of Regal on the decks. He was dropping a lot of well-produced electronic-influenced beats, a good call considering the acts to come, which is something you can’t say for all DJs. Soon enough he was accompanied by Flava Dave, who spent most of his time trying to get the people round the corner and at the back to push up to the front, lest everyone be a little embarrassed at the crowd’s sparsity.

Soon enough Hermitude were on stage with the set up of keys, decks, maybe a drum machine and a laptop, I couldn’t see, but it was sounding good.  They reworked a couple of the tracks to good effect, no doubt trying to keep themselves interested as they mechanically plodded through yet another live gig. Urthboy and Ozzi Battla appeared, as they often seem to when Hermitude are on the bill, and rapped over a few tracks, only stopping to tell the dicks in the front to stop punching each other. The problem was that when they all decided to chant in unison some indecipherable garble, you couldn’t hear the sound, and I for one came perilously close to chucking a bottle at the little nobs, but that would not have been cool, I guess. Speaking of sound, time and time again sound-dudes fail to get any treble at all at hip hop gigs, leaving rappers inaudible. Here however, it was the opposite trouble, the treble was so high it was hurting my lil’ eardrums. Guess I should stop bitching.

By the time Plutonic Lab took to stage, accompanied by DJ Bonez (also the subject of much drunken chanting regarding his deck skills, which, it could be said, were easily matched if not overpassed by El-Gusto’s) and a bassist, it felt like it had been a long wait. Everyone had buggered off for a smoke I guess, but after he spent a bit of time on the decks/laptop, playing some of his menacing medleys, ominous sounds of random string and sample over heavy hip hop beats, things were going along nicely. He moved to an electronic drum kit and a vocalist came out for a couple of songs, and we saw some great music, basically. Plutonic Lab is definitely making some of the most interesting sound-scape hip hop in the country, digging deep for true randomness of sample while also seemingly utilising the best technological options available. So big up for that.

It’s a pity no one rocked up though, considering the promotion was good enough and the acts on display were of high quality. Maybe there was something good on telly.