The Perth Festival is a strange time; great artists from around the globe grace the quaint city of Perth with some electrifying acts, despite the dry heat of Bunuru. And if I was the betting type, someone I would not expect to come down would be someone from the Arctic Circle. Thank god I didn’t put money on it, because international decade-spanning DJ sensation Röyksopp has proved me wrong.
Opening for Röyksopp was local DJ PTMC, known for coordinating local label Midnight Elevator, who led with some stellar DJ-ing. Personally, one of the signs of a good DJ to me is if they play hit after hit that I had no idea existed, and as the man next to me who kept opening Shazam can attest, the tracks Petey would pull were both unfamiliar and perfect for the vibe.
His set skillfully mixed synth-pop and some popping synths over some throbbing drums in the bass. I particularly enjoyed the effortless switching between the classic drum lines (four on the floor, calypso, etc.), done with a natural competency visible in his relaxed demeanour on stage, bopping to his own sounds.
After a very small break, Röyksopp took the stage as more of the crowd rushed into the pit (one great thing about East Perth Power Station is that there is very little difference in sound from the back of the pit to the front of stage). What followed can only be described as an Odyssey of electronica, from some heavy power electronics to house.
Röyksopp’s set was very well-curated, dictating the energy of the audience with both interest and humanistic consideration; an intense explosion of sound that enforced moving as hard as you can would be followed with a moment of respite to help reset the body before the next emphatic bass line. And that bass – if PTMC’s bass was thumping, Röyksopp’s bass impaled the crowd with a pointed low end on the 1 and 3.Their sound in general was very sharp and clean – there weren’t much noticeable effects upon their grinding oscillators. In some sense their sound was cold, which was (1) refreshing on a hot night and (2) perhaps indicative of their Northern Norway home.
A stand out across both sets was the lighting and projections behind both DJs. Maybe the fiendish imagery was somewhat out of place behind PTMC’s vaguely agnostic performance, but the bright strobes and block colours fit Röyksopp well. Every single light was taken into account and utilised fully; they bobbed to the music, filled the smoke from the smoke machine with fluorescent colours, and burned dots into my eyes that lingered for hours.
As the lights flared, the music rumbled across the venue, and hundreds of bodies moved and sweated to the beat, for a couple of hours, Röyksopp brought power back to the abandoned station.