The name Trentemoller and the words ‘live band’ sound odd together to anyone who’s heard the Dane’s music, whether it be his dancefloor-oriented or his ambient material. It’s not that his productions aren’t musical or don’t lend themselves to live reinterpretation, it’s just the thought of (to this reviewer at least) Trentemoller’s music being warped into something so different from what it sounds like on CD or vinyl is not only intriguing, but a little exciting. Thus on Friday November 30 the Gaelic Theatre was packed out with fans as interested as myself in seeing how Trentemoller’s live band could bring his album and single work to life with live keys, drums and percussion, samplers, effects, guitars and a whole manner of other gizmos and instruments.

Future Classic’s Jamie Lloyd and Jimi Polar started the evening in style, laying down a tight live set of future funk, warm, clicky tech house and a few splashes of quirky acid. Polar got busy on his Juno synth and Korg unit (I’m afraid I don’t know what it’s called, but man it made some cool noises), laying down lush, warm keys with the Juno which juxtaposed brilliantly against the squeaks, bleeps and squiggles that emanated from the Korg. Lloyd provided the beats and basslines with Ableton, and added his own vocals over numerous tracks, easing the crowd into the night with his smooth voice and clever lyrics. A top notch live set if I ever saw one.

Ken Cloud was given the warm-up duties for the evening, and while he didn’t exactly play ‘warm up’ music, he thoroughly destroyed the room and had the punters so fired up for Trentemoller’s appearance I thought they were going to start banging on the walls and chanting his name. Of course it goes without saying his mixing was nigh-on perfect, and it was great to see him play a bit more uptempo and crunchier than usual, laying down lots of bouncy fidget house, some bassline driven tech nonsense, and even the Funk D’Void classic All That Matters.

When Trentemoller stepped on stage the atmosphere in the room was a mixture of excitement, hope and anticipation. This was either going to rock, or it was going to suck. Thank god it was the former. Big time. Opening with a lush, ambient style intro, he loured the crowd into a false sense of security, giving off the impression that this set was going to be an exercise in chinstroking and head-nodding. But then the second track, Snowflake, came in mutated form, and man it came hard. Changing up what was a fairly non-descript track on his album into a ridiculously energetic synthetic drum n’ bass monster (which the live drummer had no trouble providing tight percussion for), the band immediately energised the room.

From here on in the set was an exercise in getting sweaty and throwing up the devil horns. Huge, grungy numbers reminiscent of Nine Inch Nails that let the guitarist shine, sat alongside pounding tech house tracks including a reworking of his remix of What Else Is There? and Rykettid. And then came Moan. I’ve never seen a room so entranced by a song in my life. Every bass wobble, every chord change, every short snippet of the vocal burrowed straight into the heart of every single person in the room. Oh, and then came Always Something Better to finish. Can anyone say “rock the f*ck out”?

The performance was also as impressive technically as it was musically. I personally found myself half the time admiring the tightness of the performance and the ingenuity and skill with which sequenced kicks and basslines were melded perfectly with live percussion, keys, effects, guitars, and even harmonicas and breath operated keyboards. Each member of the band brought their own element to the performance, and without them, it would have felt extremely flat. The only criticism I can really think of is the lack of a vocalist. Some of the tracks felt like all they needed was a vocalist and the experience would have stepped up from religious to orgasmic.

Given the extremely hard job of closing the room after Trentemoller, Telefunken then stepped up to the decks. And while a large proportion of punters filed out straight after Trentemoller finished (which is really typical of fickle Sydney crowds, but that’s a debate for another time), Cam and Boffa did an excellent job of keeping a reasonable number of punters in the room and bouncing around until close. Tough tech house was the order of the day for their set, which was an inspired and appropriate choice given the energy in Trentemoller’s performance. I’d love to ID some tracks for you, but I honestly couldn’t pick any of them. If you haven’t seen these guys yet, do yourself a favour and check them out, they’re worthy of the hype.

So there you have it, a top night all round. It’s a rare occurrence in dance music that an act lives up to its insane level of hype, but thankfully Trentemoller did that on Friday night. Thank god he did, because I don’t think any of you wanted to read a review panning his performance, and to be honest I really didn’t want to have to write one like that either.