- The Swedish house star shares a bill with four of the strongest artists in Australia.
- DJ Seinfeld's headline show at Melbourne Music Week's hub, The Australian Centre For The Moving Image (ACMI), was one of 88 citywide events programmed by the festival across two weeks in November. He was the only foreign act on the bill, though, as someone who's shown strong support for Melbourne producers, his inclusion felt fitting. Almost half of the tracks on Seinfeld's recent DJ Kicks mix were by Melbourne artists. I was curious to discover why.
After two failed attempts to find the entrance, an usher pointed me through what she called "the portal," a neon-lit opening leading down to ACMI's main exhibition hall. It was the venue's first time hosting a gig in the 100m-long space. At the bottom of the stairs sat a cinema-turned-rave cave, with long black curtains draping onto a vast maroon floor, where five guys sat in an audio-lighting booth bigger than the average stage. It was a spectacular scene. At the front were the decks, a massive visual projection silhouetting the DJ and the best indoor soundsystem I've ever heard.
Andy Garvey, who opened the main stage at Strawberry Fields the weekend before, went first again, this time experimenting with some broken acid jams. It took a while for the space to fill up, though András, who started his set deep and jazzy (DJ Sprinkles' "Midtown 120 Blues") before going heavier, coaxed out an accelerating stream of punters. His set was warm and danceable, though he left the crowd behind every so often with a random venture into left-field. The crowd stayed more focussed for Roza Terenzi, who unspooled 90 minutes of fractured, glitchy sounds.
At around midnight, I was standing at the back when DJ Seinfeld walked past. I tapped him on the shoulder and asked about his affinity with the music coming out of Melbourne. He lauded Australia and Canada for being "at the forefront" of innovation in house and techno. "It's more break-beaty and never sounds the same," he said.
It was no surprise, then, when he started with a flurry of breakbeat drums. Overall, his two-hour performance was well received, though some of the reactions were more mixed. Later in the set, when he nudged the BPM up, the crowd's apparent indifference suggested they were there to groove, not stomp. He wound down smoothly, ending with one of his biggest tracks, "U." The 500-strong floor clapped and cheered as he handed over to Fantastic Man. Some left, satisfied, at that point. But many of us kicked on, absorbing the final moments of the audio-visual spectacle, the grandeur of which we would likely not relive soon.