The meat in the sandwich of the Shape mini-festival had house music back in force with two of the biggest names in electro and French house gracing Perth for a night of partying. With up and coming bands like Oki Oki and Garage 2 V finalist Wales, and locals vinylsmiths Petrosex and Rex Monsoon supporting, it was a night that shouldn’t have had any trouble attracting numbers en masse.

Unfortunately, arriving at 11:30 the crowd was still sparse at best, with the majority of punters congregating outside in the beer garden. After a couple of quick bevies, it was time to head upstairs to see one of the true legends of the French house scene, mister Fred Falke. His collaborative track with Alan Braxe, ‘Intro’, was recently named by John Dahlback as one of his top five house tracks ever. He counts his peers among Daft Punk and the aforementioned Alan Braxe, and he’s remixed his heart out for acts such as Hot Chip, Justice and the Yeah Yeah Yeahs. Falke has been a strong figure for the filtered or French house scene, which is still going from strength to strength, born from disco and early Chicago house. Falke was advertised as playing a ‘semi-live set’, which this reviewer took to mean anything, but probably meant that he would be playing a lot of his own material and perhaps remixes (if Para One’s live set last year at the Bakery was anything to go by). Arriving upstairs to the sounds of recent Hercules and Love Affair single ‘Blind’, the anticipation was building and so was the crowd.

It was house we came to see and house we got. Starting off with some CDJing, Falke quickly got his Mac-attack on, running with what I can only assume was Ableton Live. He started amping things up with his recent remix of blogstar Ladyhawke, and kicked it over another notch with his banging edit of VHS or Beta’s ‘Burn It All Down’. It is always hard to really appreciate what a DJ is doing when they play from Ableton, well unless you are skilled in the art or have canine-like hearing that can pick up the subtle changes in the tracks. Despite this, Falke had the moderately filled dancefloor movin’ for the first hour of his set. Regardless of the quality of tunes pumped out by Falke, the crowd one by 1 or 2am started to wither downstairs. Maybe it is a sign of the times, or just the limited attention span endowed to the majority of gen-Y, but Falke – only an hour and a quarter into his set – had only a dozen dancers left charging. Charging they certainly were, though, but such a limited crowd can only create a limited atmosphere, and half an hour later the top deck was shut down. Shame Perth, shame.

After such a disappointing end to Falke’s set, it was time to head downstairs to check out another blogsphere fave, Curses!/Drop The Lime. Also being a remixer in demand, having tuned his hands to Juiceboxxx and Dre Skull, Midnight Juggernauts and Moby, he adds the ‘East Coast Heavy Bass’ wherever he goes. Coming from a quality label like Institubes, the man obviously had some production talent, but how was he behind the wheels? The crowd was pumping, lapping up his bass heavy-fidget electro-techno. A standout was one of the numerous remixes of D.I.M’s ‘Is You’, which was blended quite well for someone who seems to do his best work at the mixing desk.

All in all another quality night put on by the good folks at Shape, and again a less than deserving crowd for two world class artists. I hope that Perth can reverse this trend and Shape starts getting the lovin’ and crowds it thoroughly deserves, once and for all shaking the ‘Dullsville’ tag. Get out there people, support your local promoters who are working so hard to bring you the finest acts from across the globe!