Live Review: Carl Craig Synthesizer Ensemble

There are still massive queues at Melbourne Recital Centre's bars just before 8pm, which doesn't bode well for Red Bull Music Academy Presents Carl Craig Synthesizer Ensemble starting on time. We settle into our seats and prepare for Craig and co to perform compositions from the Detroit techno maestro's Versus album, which was released earlier this year.

Snippets from Martin Luther King's I Have A Dream speech penetrate our ears together with majestic, apocalyptic sounds as immense as a symphony orchestra. Luther King's words haunt us. Have we come any closer to realising his dream or are we moving further away from it in these fucked-up times? We strain our eyes and search the stage for a string or brass section, but alas! It's a Synthesiser Ensemble (as advertised) and all sounds are produced by Craig (who sports a snazzy hat), MD/pianist Kelvin Sholar (also sporting stylish headwear) plus what we'd like to call four 'synthologists': Jon Dixon, Greg Burk, Christoph Adams and Jarrod Chase.

Visuals on the cyclorama often contain photographs of Craig's hometown, where the pioneering producer tells us he had a purple patch. We're presented with edgy, mesmeric, penetrating, reinvented versions of Craig's tunes about which he generously provides back stories and outlines his influences. Of all these, it's Technology that most stops us in our tracks. In Synthesiser Ensemble mode, it is as mighty as any Star Wars soundtrack. Some in attendance who are more familiar with Craig's work behind the decks may be a tad baffled, but we're entirely convinced and in awe of how these songs translate. And Sholar's work at the piano totally elevates this Melbourne Recital Centre crowd - we're not worthy!

There's a genuine encore. The house lights are already in, but dim once Craig and co return to the stage. Some punters rise to their feet for a dance during the encore and those who remain seated don't know what they're missing. The performance runs for one-and-half hours with no intermission and it's all over by 9.30pm. A group of punters exiting the venue turn to one another, "Where to now?" They've got the whole night ahead of them, but something tells us they'll be pushing shit uphill to find anything that equals the brilliance of what we've just witnessed.