The Presets

While doing my admittedly minimal and coffee fuelled research on Sydney based The Presets I came across the phrase 'dance-punk duo'. Almost instantly my preconception-o-meter lit up with a sigh of "not another bad Klaxons imitation", perhaps wrong of me, but in today's ever so disposable music market probably to be somewhat expected. I can honestly say I've never been more pleasantly surprised in my life, considering the absolute apathy I felt towards the gig before they actually started playing.



So, within thirty seconds of my first alcoholic purchase an atmospheric and fairly lengthy piece of intro music began as lights combed the crowd. We were off to a good start and an even better continuation when a solid drumbeat kicks its way in and Born Slippy-esque vocals chime over the top. The small but hugely dedicated crowd gathered round the stage instantly put on their rave-hats and got down. Now when I say rave I am really not referring to the dire and youthquake atrocity which is nu-rave. What I heard here was far more similar to an 'Experience' era Prodigy gig, with sparse lashings of Orbital's 'Green Album'.

They pulled this off extremely well, sinking into a quick drum-less breakdown which had a certain amount of Pink Floyd influence (oddly enough) before kicking right back into a beefier version of the main tune that preceded it. This is a classic and massively effective trick which I would see through many, many songs of the evening. This isn't a criticism either, as every time they dropped it in there it seemed fresh, damn cool (a word used possibly twenty times in my notes while watching them) and had my head going back and forth with an audacity that I've never experienced before when attempting to scribble notes down at a stupid pace.

The venue itself was a small but smartly decked out student bar, reflected in a couple of dregs from the university hanging around unaware of what was going on onstage. But these were in a vast minority, as wherever you looked around the room was swamped with dancing, raving and general dance-gig madness. There was only one point I can pinpoint throughout the gig where dancing didn’t really occur and rightfully so.



It was after six hard and fast raves (with admittedly one or two rather bland contributions, but these were outweighed by the greater good) that calmed down for a moment as a Nintendo era 8-bit line repeated. I instantly anticipated the next stonking beat, which actually never delivered. This again is a good thing, as a glockenspiel tinkled around and it slowly became something that could have been backing music on an early Donkey Kong Country game.

This was a testament to the diversity I heard this evening, despite it mainly being some form of dance or techno (except for the mind-blowing robotic version of Sigur Ros I just described) there was a wide variety of influences from the electronic scene. Combining the aforementioned Prodigy, Underworld and Orbital with the recent London streets phenomena of Dub-step, LCD Soundsystem and Flat Eric I was presented with some extremely interesting takes on these types of music. Non-electronic influences came from as far and wide as Sex Pistols' John Lydon (vocally) the again aforementioned Pink Floyd and Sigur Ros and I even heard a dash of Radiohead's revolutionary use of the Ondes Martinot in one or two tunes.

I apologise for my lengthy foray into influences but I just wanted to try and get across the diversity I heard this evening with each performance still having its own twinge of familiarity, tying them all together. It was this that had me bowled over by this gig, and hope that they take things further and make a bigger name for themselves, hence my glowing review of them. While they are a somewhat 'baby lemonade' version of nineties greats like Orbital or Underworld (I'm beginning to feel like a parrot) they were massively refreshing in today's climate of annoying and forgettable pseudo-dance Indie bands with a synthesiser. Want a good dance and thrash around that will last from start to finish? The Presets are your man (and woman).

FUTURE GIGS

sorry, we currently have no gigs listed for this act.