I am a confessed Francophile. Not the people mind you, more so when it comes to culture, music, art, cinema, literature and the like. You can’t beat a bit of Gallic spice to liven things up. And so with the arrival in Sydney of the Institubes Paris Terror Club, purveyors of electro, house, hip hop and gothtech, I was keen for a bit of that unmistakable sound and I burst in to the main room of the Oxford Art Factory with my wrist stamp proudly displayed. And so you can understand my disappointment in finding a 7-piece folk band onstage singing dirges and ditties to the accompaniment of an accordion. Worse was to come in the form of the Red Sun Band, the sort of music that emos kill themselves too I would think.
At this point I thought it best to go and seek some clarity and discovered that the venue was multi tasking and that the more dancey night would be kicking off later, at 11.30. And so we kicked back into the frontroom, listening to a procession of hip hop, 80s music and at the end, lots of Violent Femmes, all the while sipping on $9 longnecks and awesome Red Bull sangria until the time to get our French on had come.
Enter Gaybash. Two pleasant looking ladies who were just playing music they liked as far as I could tell, there didn’t seem to be a theme, in fact could there be a theme in a set featuring What’s Love You To Go With It?, Forgot About Dre and Snow’s Informer? These guys sure got everyone dancing with classic after classic until around 12.30ish, when Mik the Menace took to the stage and things blew up. I’ll be honest, I didn’t like every tune he played but the effect was phenomenal; the whole crowd going off at every fast-paced drop. The highlight I think was the mash up of Kris Kross’s Jump with Daft Punk’s Fahrenheit 451 (though perhaps I’m giving away my age, and the fact I would love to wear my clothes backwards or go to work dressed as a dog). Bouncing about behind the decks, his hands a flurry of action as he tweaked every knob and button in search of the right sound this was a mad, funky set designed to make you dance and smile, something the DJ was certainly doing. And he wasn’t even French!
Orgasmic came next, and not without some difficulty.
Hooking up notepads to the system seemed to cause some issues, and was followed by a farce playing out along the lines of anywhere up to eight people behind the decks pulling at wires and plugging them back in again, with the occasional word of advice from the crowd just to make things complete. This made for a highly amusing visual accompaniment, but the fact was the tunes kept coming, thick and fast (although I couldn’t quite suss out how). Getting Frencher and Frencher as things traveled along, garlic suffused the air along with a bunch of other appropriate stereotypes. It was slightly moody, quite serious in it’s way.
Off to the free bar bit for a little sit down and some phat electro, reggae, hip hop action and the sound of a thousand voices. With a gig starting at 11.30 you know how it can get late real early and by the time we were back on the dancefloor it was Bobmo spinning the tracks, now with a stronger house slant but the irresistible kick backs of reckless, high tempo mixing and the odd banger from any genre.
This was a fantastic night. I didn’t manage to hang on till the end which was around five or six I think, but it was still going off as we left. Das Glow was carrying the baton ever onwards while the thoughts of food and bed were surging through my mind. It was a tasty night of upfront dancology and I’d be very surprised if anyone left unhappy, with the possibly exception of the Red Sun Band fans who decided to stick about but made the mistake of going to the toilet and finding themselves with the wrong stamp on their wrists! The Oxford Art factory always puts on a good show and this was no exception. I didn’t manage to suss out what exactly ‘gothtech’ is, but with such a small quibble to take home with me this was one that I’ll remember dearly for some time.
