“With long armpit sticking out like a small thumb, smelling like dinosaur dung.” Busdriver comes to Sydney, to Australia, for the very first time and clearly brings along a somewhat skewed sense of hip hop appreciation. Revelling in the heavily syncopated free rapping style of articulated quirkiness, Busdriver is off the beaten track of hip hop enough to clearly need a warm up from a similar left field position.

Curse Ov Dialect enter stage right. We have, a normal human on decks, a bin bag gimp on mike abuse, a dancing, rapping Punjabi in national costume, the dwarf, gnome, hobbit (I’m not sure what, which one’s are the right shape just small and wearing funny hats? It was one of those) and, replete with Venetian mask and highway-to-heaven hair, some sort of Spanish bandit. Now, far be it for me to judge people entirely on appearances, that would be stupid, especially a band, but when I saw these guys assemble I was sure, certain, that I was about to see a human sacrifice. Mores the pity I didn’t.

With a mawkish style, shouty, vague, shot through with moments of real comedy and exciting antics and eclectic to the point of making a point of it, this Melbourne quintet, the first Aussie hip hop act to be signed to a US label, whilst interesting, entertaining and remarkable are not, for all that, particularly good rappers. And yet, so interesting are they, I’m tempted to forgive them that.
They were entertaining. I haven’t heard any of their albums, and I’m not sure I’d want to, but as a live act my eyes were certainly glued to the stage and the Spanish bandit fella had a good line in syllable spitting when he got in to the rhythm.

Then we had Anti MC. Normally, he said, his set up was in his parent’s spare bedroom and he felt it was music that was sort of fun to dance to sometimes. With some sort of drum pad, sampler, CD decks, deck decks and an electric guitar, this was a one-man-band for the year 2008! Creating a world of electro, 80s influenced, streaming music, he was hard to grasp, like free jazz in it’s way. Moments when it all comes together and makes perfect sense that emerge out of the mayhem. Especially when he ground his ax.

On comes Busdriver at long last and starts rapping. His latest album RoadKillOvercoat is a beguiling mix of intelligent, thoughtful rap and utter nonsense. Writhing around as the lyric pitter patter out in unexpected formations. Utilising two mikes, one hooked up to a foot operated distorter, he was on lyrics and sounds whilst Anti MC carried on in the backround, adding his own worth touches to the backing tracks.

Quite a spectacle and a performance too, even if the man did at times seem to be frustrated with the crowd who were slow to warm up. I would guess, roughly, that this was because the whole thing had started late and the warm up acts had left them all a bit cold but in any case as the set wore on the dancing intensified. Out came some of the power tracks from the latest album, Kill Your Employer a highlight as was Unemployed Black Astronaut from his album Fear of a Black Tangent.

All in all a polished performance and one enhanced, for the fan, by the unique styles injected in to each track. You weren’t hearing something rehashed and well practised, this was something unique, a one-off retelling of the song for one night only. Come and gone for the first time, Busdriver is a unique and enlightening addition to the hip hop scene and whilst it would be a shame for him to become a mainstream act, you suspect he would wear it well and not lose the novelty that’s really all his.