By far the most extraordinary aspect to electronic trio Seekae’s set at Manning Bar on Saturday night was the atmosphere. See, the thing about Seekae is that they’re from the same school of chilled-out, beat-centric mellow dance as acts like Bon Chat, Bon Rat, Caribou, and early Hot Chip, meaning that attending one of their gigs can be a confusing affair.

Do we dance? Do we nod appreciatively? Are our displays of approval to be voiced in beer-soaked woops and shouts, or in polite and scholarly golf claps? The end result at Sydney University on Saturday was somewhere between a club night and a poetry reading; whilst the central pit of die-hard Seekae maniacs grooved and swayed warmly, the more inhibited of us shuffled appreciatively from foot-to-foot and nodded admiringly.

Following on from the success of their debut offering, 2009’s The Sound of Trees Falling on People, the Seekae boys were in town promoting their new album +Dome. The band kicked off their set as three dark silhouettes backlit by bands of coloured light and shrouded in a thin layer of stage mist, in a piece of stage production that was equal parts Spinal Tap and Kubrick.

Seekae projected a sense of complete musical focus, as the three faceless shadows cowered and hunched over their music machines, lost in the beats like hipster Quasimodos. The audience’s curiosity and reverence began to give way to a fired-up and appreciative atmosphere, as the beat-heavy numbers with their placid synths and spectral choral contributions filled the club like a shroud of fog.

As the band members leapt back and forth between their Macs and their Fenders, their machines and their instruments, you got the sense that Seekae are an incredibly musically-talented bunch of chaps, straddling the line between intricate music production and out-and-out instrumentals.

Not only this, but their sound is one of genuine artistic exploration and crazy versatility; from upbeat tracks with house pianos and organs, to choppy, industrial electronic sounds, Seekae’s adventurous production is boundary-pushing and unconventional. It speaks volumes about the band’s avant-garde soundscape that the Manning Bar fire alarm was going off for a full three minutes or so before anyone realised that it wasn’t just another kooky sample thrown in by the Seekae guys.

Amazingly nonchalant and unshaken by the alarm, Seekae summoned Herculean musical strength to soldier through the disturbance and carry us through to the other side, using tracks both old and new to keep the audience smiling and moving. The band’s sound is at its strongest when the synths and processed melodies are combined with snappy and stomping live drums, and together with the padding and shuffling organs and sombre, aquatic strings samples, the audience quickly forgot about that bastard fire alarm.

After ferrying the audience through the annoyance on a raft made of gentle synths and caressing drumbeats, Seekae let fly with a sampled-up version of White Town’s Your Woman before closing with 3, one of the stronger tracks from the new album with its raked and scratchy bursts of scrambled guitars.

As we were expelled from our warm musical womb of Seekae loveliness into the increasingly chilly night air, warmth and eyes-half-closed happiness spread through the audience, as we realised we’d all shared something intricate, intelligent, beautiful and (most importantly) creatively innovative.