Putting the gender into the bender that was the string of sideshows leading up to this year’s Falls Fest was Peaches’ DJ set at Melbourne’s Corner Hotel. An ex-school teacher, Ms Nisker clearly knew how to keep an attention-deficit-disordered crowd from running around dacking each other like pre-schoolers who forgot to take their Ritalin. Much like Fat Cat (incidentally shut down for allowing a cat on TV with a gender not clearly defined) the formula was simple: put on a costume, some coordinated dance moves with a bit of a sing-a-long and the kids will fricking love it.

Adding to that formula was Peaches’ line-up of support acts, continuing on in quick succession to lead up to the set by JD Sampson, hotly anticipated in its own right, if the size of the crowd gathered early on was any indication. Although JD didn’t drop and give us twenty as this guitarist for Peaches’ band The Herms has been known to do onstage (push-ups, that is, and not girlie style either), the Le Tigre guitarist is no slouch on the decks. Switching between her laptop and the turntables, JD’s expression for the first half of the set was one of fixed concentration, broken only when she paused to push her glasses up from sliding down her nose. By contrast, the crowd wore expressions somewhere between adoration for this chic-est of geeks and big cheesy grins as JD played cranking track after cranking track from the get-go.

With a fake elevator move, JD then descended behind the decks as Peaches announced her appearance, storming the stage in a giant tit-suit. Yes, a tit-suit. Best look at the photos and you will get the idea but to put it into words, it was like a gigantic pine-cone of breasts in all different shapes and sizes with perky little nipples made out of dolls’ heads, strung together. Comparisons with Lady Gaga* were murmured through the crowd and yet, when you look back you realise Peaches has been rocking outlandish outfits long before Lady Gaga rode her first disco stock. Her unshaven bikini-line alone spoke volumes more on the subject of femininity and gender norms than any meat dress of Gaga’s could.

Peaches’ theatrics continued as her two dancers then lunged onstage like extra-terrestrial ballerinas as the set swung from pop-heavy tunes like Rye Rye’s Bang! and Salt’n’Pepa’s Push It to dirty house crowd-pleasers like Cajmere’s Coffee Pot and Larry Tree feat. Roxy Cottontail’s Let’s Make Nasty. Their hair was so coiffed and the flashing lights on their costumes so surreal, you had to wonder whether they were battery-operated fembots with a portable recharged device positioned somewhere offstage, where they retreated and then re-emerged dressed like disco-belly-dancing hybrids.

Not to be upstaged by her back-up dancers, Peaches commanded the crowd’s attention back every now and then by climbing up onto the decks and crouching over the turntables as if she were about to give birth to something on them. At one point, something did in fact emerge from between her thighs – a champagne bottle she then shook about and kindly sprayed into the open mouths lined up front to receive a load after she took a swig herself, announcing that it was hot under that tit-suit.

Refreshments were probably needed for the next dancer to join Peaches onstage – an androgynous boy with long flowing hair and thigh-high black patent leather boots, who emerged from the wings to give the Corner a kind of strip-tease it might not have seen before. His gorgeousness seemed to go beyond something either of male or female form and as he writhed about and spat champagne on our faces to leave the crowd intrigued and somewhat bemused.

Peaches then snapped us back to attention with Major Lazer’s Pon de Floor, as her two peacherinas leapt back onstage wearing pig masks, kyupi dolls pinned on their crotch and their very own tit suits. As the girls popped bunches of grapes into their mouths, Peaches’ set rolled into more guitar-driven dance tunes like the Gossip’s Pop Goes the World. With the set more than halfway done, Peaches finally got on the mike for Why Don’t You Talk to Me. Underneath all the flashing lights, strip-teasing transvestites, dang, this lady can sing.

Someone then took it upon themselves to strip off and jump onstage to dance around in their undies. The rest of the crowd then sensed a free-for-all when no bouncers appeared to drag anyone away, flooding the stage in varying states of undress. The dancers had to weave their way through the sweaty mass in red kabuki wigs and hooded tops back onto their podiums and Peaches disappeared somewhere in the scrum as gangsta rap tracks like Three 6 Mafia’s Fuck That Shit thumped out. Peaches then emerged from the masses, mounting the decks again to thread the mic through a beam leaving it suspended and swinging in the air as she sang Fuck the Pain Away to then get swept back into the crowd as the gig drew to a close.

If there is any criticism, Ms Nisker could have treated us to more sing-a-longs but this was a DJ set after all, and if you want a bigger slice of Peaches, you best hope she makes her way back on tour sometime soon.

Which leads to the question of what’s next for costume designer Vaughan Alexander? We’ve done dicks and boobs so can we expect to see Peaches rolling herself on-stage like some circus performer atop a gigantic pair of hairy balls? Or maybe some kind of clitoris-inspired outfit?

Whatever it is, there’s little doubt Peaches’ theatrics and her prowess as a DJ and performer will keep giving us mind-blow-jobs for as long as she’s up for it.