In case you didn’t know, the eighties are back hipper than ever. Music and fashion trends across the globe have seen hipsters everywhere embracing the supposed ‘decade that style forgot’. Some of the coolest cats at the forefront of the revival are French collective Valerie. Consisting of artists like Anoraak, The Outrunners and Maethelvin, they are producing melodic electro full of layered synths with cheesy, cheap and cheerful beats and an all round upbeat sound. They have gone for a more cultured and disco flavoured sound rather than the chainsaw electro of their Ed Banger countrymen. The first artist that has joined the collective from across the Channel is London native Russ Chimes. Chimes has been remixing everyone from Chromeo to new pop sensation Sam Sparro, and had arrived in Perth in fairly low key fashion.

It was a blustery cold night in Perth that Chimes was set to play Shape, but this didn’t stop the punters from coming out in force. Arriving to a busy venue, it was good to see the club really hitting its straps. On the decks was Mick Zing who definitely had the crowd in a good mood. The front room was packed and was slowly but surely getting moving with Zing dropping some crowd friendly tracks like The Presets recent single This Boy’s In Love, the Breakbot remix of Pnau’s Baby and the Zombie Disco Squad remix of Gameboy/Gamegirls Pumps and Rumps. Finishing of with a bit of local representing playing Shazam’s cover/remix of Muscles’s huge hit of last year Sweaty, Zing put on a good set to get the crowd going.

Chimes came on at around midnight and to be honest, I’m not sure how many of the punters knew who he was, but his sound was recognisable from the get go. He, like so many DJs today, had his laptop out and from what I’ve read, was running Logic and Ableton and perhaps had that ‘semi-live’ thing going on. It was like one big hypercolour patchwork quilt with soaring synths going everywhere and playful bass lines embroidered through the fabric wherever he pleased. Reminiscent of Fred Falke a month earlier, Chimes was putting the French touch on everything (though I guess in this case it would be the English touch). The crowd was enjoying it a fair bit judging by the amount of booties being shaken. With an EP of new original material and an EP of older material on the cards to be released in the near future, Chimes had no shortage of tunes to play with. From the Miami Vice slick of Afterburner to his disco homage remix of Sam Sparro’s Black and Gold and even a little bit of Oz love with *Bag Raider*’s Fun Punch.

A quality evening from a quality producer, then. But even if it’s something we’ll all have to get used to, it still feels a little lifeless staring at an apple logo all night. Nonetheless, it’s good to see that lesser known but still up and coming names are coming to visit the West Coast, and the Perth punters are turning out to see them.