It was another return of one of the old school legends, that had the interest of punters piqued, when Goldie returned to Perth on Saturday night to play at Rises Revolution night.
A strange crowd presented itself upon entry – a mix of dnb heads, rise goers and the odd strange people who seem to have merely wandered in off the streets gave off a fairly strange vibe, but as hit the stage a few heads were already getting into it.
Packer came on, and, yes, once again played a great set – if but that it was a little too crowd pleasing. It would be a great thing to see him playing a little more of his own comfort-niche style during the night, and dropping more liquid, but one guesses that he must play for the crowd that presents itself there – and what he did play was, as always, a round-about display of his years of talent. Thumbs up to the maestro of Perth dnb.
Goldie stepped up to the stage, and to put it bluntly – the man just looked like he didn’t even want to be there. Unfortunately, his introductory tune was possibly the highlight of the entire set. It can only be described as all over the place – a strange mix of tunes from hard, to liquid-funk to clown-stepping and a bit of Pendulumesque in between, but without any kind of direction involved. When listening to an international, one doesn’t expect to hear a train-wreck. One is forgivable. Two is bad. Three means that something drastically wrong is occurring. It was messy, and nothing else can describe it. A lot of the crowd didn’t seem to mind however, yet that may have been due to their state of inebriation more than an appreciation of technique. Strange, as one would think that the more than likely hefty price tag associated with having him perform would almost guarantee a much more concise set that the rambling, dissonant journey he embarked upon for the night. Props do however, have to go to MC LowQui – who spun out an amazing set of lyrically charged and in-key vocals, at times his sing-mc sounding very much in style to our own Assassins style of MCing.
Goldie was followed up by Muller and Xcessiv, both who performed really well together – only catching the beginning of the set before heading off into the evening, what was played was solid, and a promising change from the prior debacle of Goldies set. There’s no doubt that Muller deserves to be on the bill at so many events, and that is that he is simply a talented DJ who can work a crowd.
The locals really did out-do Goldie, who, even though he started off well and played a wide variety of tunes, just never managed to get any sort of flow happening. His angry face seems to be a trademark, but it was a little disappointing to see that the man really didn’t give much of himself to the crowd, leaving this reviewer completely unimpressed with his showmanship as well as his seemingly waning technical skills. Next time, I believe I’ll give Goldie a miss and just go for our home-grown talent and the regular crew of Revolution, who proved themselves miles above the headlining act. Well done again Perth, on showing them how it’s done over DJs who just may have, unfortunately, had their moment in El Dorado.
