Live Review: Factory Floor, Roland Tings, Kangaroo Skull

My Disco’s drummer Rohan Rebeiro delves into grinding techno with drum machines and synths for his Kangaroo Skull side project.

My Disco’s tunes have plenty of bite and Rebeiro’s take on techno is similarly aggressive. There is a sinister darkness to the palette of sounds he uses to accompany insistent broken beats and deep bass throb. It’s a deep, tech sound with dubstep distractions that Kangaroo Skull jackhammers into our brains and pummels into our minds. A vigorous, electric shock of a set to kick off the evening.

After the thunderous intensity of Kangaroo Skull, Roland Tings’ take on tech house provides some light relief. Tonight Tings presents as a duo that deals in rubbery, mid-tempo tech house that comes with all the usual ingredients including reflective spoken word samples, deep throbbing bass and endlessly repetitive beats with plenty of bass drum kick. Dealing what feels like a long and epic set, Tings’ music feels like a feelgood throwback to the groove box, tech house of the late ‘90s. Tings has not been especially prolific since introducing themselves with the Milky Way 12” back in 2012. This year’s Who U Love single, released on Prins Thomas’ Internasjonal label, has been getting these producers from Melbourne plenty of attention.

English trio Factory Floor strip back to a duo for their first shows in Australia this month. Under the blinding flash of a strobe they deal two, long, intense electronic jams that draw upon elements of the album they released on DFA Records earlier this year. Their brutal take on proto-industrial music mixed up with fierce, electro-punk attitude is compelling. Applying a scalpel to anything extraneous, the mix is reduced to its most elemental form. Punishing beats punctuated by plenty of TR808 cowbell accompany clangorously metallic tones that yield to spasms of intense synth noise. Occasionally they approximate the acid of yesteryear to feelgood effect.

Factory Floor aim to obliterate the dance floor and they do it with ease as they rather nonchalantly tweak the knobs on their synths, one of which resembles a little semi-modular. Dance music can be a lot of things these days but Factory Floor, with their distinctive take on electro-punk, seem to have won a largely indie-tronic following. The crowd enthusiastically pull shapes and lose themselves in the music.  Just as they get us in the mood to dance the night away, Factory Floor’s set ceases. With no encore, they clock in at just 40 (unsatisfyingly) short minutes.