Live Review: HTRK

With Brisbane Festival already in full swing, tonight sees a late-night offering from experimental Melbourne duo HTRK.

As with any HTRK show, a sense of scepticism is always healthy before seeing the band live as they often struggle to bring the intensity and depth they offer up on record to the live arena. This is always due in part to sound issues and the setting ruining the desired atmosphere as intended by the group. But with the backing of a thumping PA and the Spiegeltent’s production values well known, a good handful of punters have gathered with high hopes.

Things initially start off quite dull with, yes, the sound not working in the group’s favour. This does shift quite dramatically though as the group dive into their latest masterwork, Psychic 9-5 Club, with Give It Up demanding attention, forcing you into its dark world of thick and deep 808s and almost space-like synths playing the heavily-textured backdrop to the defeatist vocal delivery of Jonnine Standish. All of a sudden it falls apart again with Blue Sunshine as the production loses all depth and Standish begins to drop noticeably out of tune during sections of the track and seems not to know what to do on stage when she’s not contributing to a point in a track.

The rest of the set proves to really be quite hit and miss. Work (Work, Work) cut Synthetik is so eerily haunting while at the same time hyper-sexual, but this same environment does not translate with Psychic highlight Chinatown Style with tempos and volume levels so drastically unbalanced that it sounds like a complete mess that isn’t aided by Standish’s voice, which, on record is a tender, open and addictive moment but tonight sounds as if she’s a chain-smoker attempting karaoke.

Nigel Yang is clearly the driving force of the group and onstage seems to be constantly busy in comparison to previous performances where it felt as if he was just hitting a play button somewhere. The lighting also plays a big part tonight as fog fills the room and lights go from pitch black to blood red with each shifting moment and it does aid the atmosphere tremendously, even feeling at times to overshadow the band’s actual music. By the time closer, The Body You Deserve, kicks in the audience is clearly divided in their opinion of the set so far but it’s a solid way to go out on that should have appeared earlier in the set, while older tracks such as Panties and Eat Yr Heart should have been getting an airing as opposed to the obvious flops.

By HTRK live standards, tonight did go slightly better than past appearances but only by the pubic hair of a dubby 808.