Kitty - Review of Kitty Cluster
Being a fan of electronic music and a maker of sound, I was indeed quite keen to immerse myself
in the real world of electronic music, away from the tired trance tirade that dominates the scene in Hobart
and renders me bored shitless on nights out. There are only so many 4:4 beats my mind can
handle. At Kitty Cluster my mind was beaten, moulded, mashed, skewered and blasted with coarse sand and glass.
I arrived at Mobius with the hope of discovering a landscape of skeletal beats, scattered and
strewn in an eclectic open graveyard where many overgrown, brilliantly-coloured weeds and
plants thrive and vine like, grasping noise can hold you aloft, curling around your body and
slowly fixing you still an appreciation of precise production.
Then local performance artist Andrew Harper stepped up, adding another item to his showcase
of events. He screamed his way through an inintelligible rant, with the help of vocal manipulation,
and his pre-queued projections held a variety of images. I would like to see this spoken
(shouted) word art taken further, either toning down so to be comprehended, or stepping up into
some surreality.
By Henry Brush - taken from People's Independent Music Press No. 3.
note: identification errors in the original have been rectified
Instead I was blown away by the sheer distortion and white noise. Fixing a microphone to a
sheet of flimsy metal, Chrysalis blasted the speakers in a thick, rough, raw display of amplified
metal using pedals of the phasing, feedback and distortion kind. No one was disinterested. He had a great presence,
I was deeply impressed.
In juxtaposition, next act Canvas City were refined and subtle. Tom and Dave weaved an
atmosphere of precise crystal murkiness with keyboards, a drum machine and a pc running some
sort of sound synthesis program being altered and played in real time. Their set moved into
an almost warped carnival tinkle at times as Tom showed som skills on the keys.
After this I thought the night was over, as did a few others of the 50-odd crowd, with some
departures. Luckily I stuck it out for a few minutes, as an entertainment treat emerged. Idiot Lust.
A dark heavily face-painted, balding, presence demanding freak-show-in-a-dress-of-black stepped up.
There were moments of genius amidst the mess, as the satirical Ladyboy showed a variety of styles
from "emotional metal breakdown" to piss-takes of Aussie Hip-hop and songs about Tassie cops.
Heavily influenced by the 80s-90s heavy fast Gabba-mod scene, he really mashed things around.
All in all I enjoyed my night at Mobius. The atmosphere seemed a little reliant on as much
noise as possible at all times with little time for aural rest, maybe not everyone's cup of tea.
I know there are more electronic artists out there in Hobart, and I call upon them to stand up -
let's really get a scene here.