Saturday night, the song tells us, is alright for fighting. What then is Friday night alright for? Well, Friday’s night’s alright for funk. And if you want to get the most alright funk going round at the moment, then Friday night’s alright for Dust Tones.

I came in out of the rain and sped up the stairs to Bar Broadway just in time to catch the final few tunes from Flava Dave, setting the scene nicely for the fine evening that was to follow. Setting up on stage were Funk Injection. You are going to be hearing a lot of these folk, I reckon. Funk Injection’s drummer and keyboard player are better known as one of Australia’s pre-eminent electronic acts, which I’m not going to name because (a) I think you should go see them and find out for yourselves and (b) Funk Injection are plenty good enough to trade on their own name without having to rely on someone else’s. In addition to keys and drums, their line-up also conhsists of sax, guitar, bass and a conga player who ( Christopher Walken be praised!) also does some fine work with a cowbell.

The sound is not just funk; they opened up with a ska number and there was some acid jazz in there and some Phil Spector-ish wall of sound moments. What held it all together was that it swung. And how. Special mention to the sax player who sure knows which is the dangerous end of that instrument, and to the guitarist who at one stage was playing the body of his guitar as a percussion instrument while using pedals to change the pitch. As good as they were tonight at Bar Broadway, I reckon they might even be better in fresh air and sunshine; and indeed, if Funk Injection don’t get booked a whole bunch over summer, then we will have proof positive that there’s no justice in the world. Promoters, hop to it.

Good Buddha Sound System up next, and this was the flat part of the night for mine. The Sound System configuration involves a main MC and two female singers, with Jack Prest on the decks, and they just didn’t seem to quite get the energy of the acts that bookended them.

The other bookend of course being Percussion Junction, who were meant to be launching their new album. However, due to the small fact of it not being ready, they could not break a bottle of champagne over the album’s bow (Safety note: kids, don’t try breaking bottles of champagne over your albums at home). What Percussion Junction could do, however, was showcase some of the material off the album, including the first material I’ve seen from them with vocals. Of that material, the stand-out was All Out War, with Gab’s drumhead-tight delivery perfectly complementing both the subject matter and the drumheads around her. The album, when it drops, is going to be something pretty special, especially if the electricity of their live performance can be captured.

Headliner time now though, and that meant Flow Dynamics stepping up to the stage with a laptop and a whole bunch of kit of some indeterminate electronic origin. He knows what he’s doing with all that kit, and he spent the next two hours showing us just how. There were beats, there were breaks, there was funk, there was soul and we got to see him take apart and back together tracks from the really rather right-on album he was launching tonight (my favourite being the way he pulled the flute line out of Live In The Mix and used it to toy with dance floor). One of the things I rate most about seeing live sets from producers I love is seeing them manipulate their own music in ways that others just can’t. This set scored very high points from me for that (and indeed, high points in every other category as well). Highly, highly recommended.

Mark Walton was the last to grace the decks, but by that stage my feet were pointing homewards (and in any event, reviewing one of Mark Walton’s sets is a bit like reviewing Roger Federer’s ability with a tennis racquet – what’s left to say?) so I headed home from yet another brilliant audio adventure induced by the Dust Tones crew. If you’ve not yet chosen Dust Tones as your own adventure, you really can’t afford to keep missing out…