Live Review: Live Music Safari

One of the staples and highlights of Melbourne Music Week, Live Music Safari, sees 14 venues around the CBD open their doors for a night of free live music with an absolute treasure trove of diverse acts across the board. Looking at the timetable, it's a daunting logistical nightmare that puts any festival timetable clash in a golden light. But the idea is to go where and as far the night takes you.

First stop? Lounge as Canadian-born producer/DJ Jennifer Loveless takes the twilight set and, bam! It's a false start as the venue (which kicked off at 5pm) is somehow already incredibly behind schedule. All is not completely lost, however, as Prequel delivers some funk-inspired house from behind the decks. But the dancefloor is a ghost town with most punters either eating an early dinner or enjoying warm-up beers, rendering Prequel's set more as background noise.

It's now off to John Curtin Hotel from which PBS broadcast live with a stellar line-up of talent. The meal ticket, having been up bright and early performing as part of Face The Music's Morning Ritual, Jess Ribeiro is at it again performing for the second time today and the Curtin bandroom is unsurprisingly packed. Dedicating their performance to asylum seekers, Ribeiro and her band wear "Bring Them Here" T-shirts - it's a bit more of a laidback atmosphere from the band tonight. Highlights come from the group's unexpected cover of Big Star/This Mortal Coil's Kangaroo, which naturally suits Ribeiro's voice although she avoids the stupidly high falsetto of This Mortal Coil's version. A stripped-back version of Kill It Yourself rounds out the set, although it feels as if the band have a few more left in them as they get the nod from the sound engineer to wrap it up. A highlight set nonetheless.

Boasting debatably the heaviest line-up of the night, headed up by Little Desert and the epic Taipan Tiger Girls, The Last Chance Rock & Roll Bar (formerly The Public Bar) originally had local noise-pop act Ohms billed to open the venue but, as a result of a line-up change, emerging local act Root Rat fill the unexpected void. The four-piece offer up a brash piece of '90s-inspired experimental punk with a bit of sludge thrown into the mix, which comes off as quite authentic for the most part with only a few growing pains/inspiration-based copy-and-paste moments arising. On any normal night the rest of this bill is truly worth staying for, but you just gotta keep on movin' tonight.

It's a little after 10pm and deciding where to hit up next is a little like Sophie's Choice. But, over at Hugs & Kisses, the back-alley dance club boasts a solid and diverse line-up made up of local underground experimental and electronic talent. Perhaps their biggest drawcard comes in the form of Spike Fuck. Running to the venue, it's a battle against the clock — who'd have thought Apple Maps being buggy was still a thing. After getting lost in all the wrong alleys around the CBD it requires a bit of intuition to find the venue. We sprint up the stairs and fortunately things are running a little late here too. Performed solo in a karaoke-style, laptop/microphone-based fashion, the songs from acclaimed The Smackwave EP are instantly affecting and come across just as brutal/honest live as on record. The sound is hard to describe and it's kinda The Magnetic Fields-meets-Suicide-meets-Bowie playing in the wrong bar in the wrong side of town with an unknown X element thrown into the mix. Without a doubt, Spike Fuck is one of the hidden gems of tonight's all-you-can-eat buffet and the hype behind this artist is warranted.

A quick detour to Section 8, down the road from this venue, reveals a harsh reality. With Section 8's limited capacity and, debatably, the best line-up of the night (headed up by experimental Detroit rapper Black Milk), set times aren't announced to try and combat crowd flow and, for us on Safari, unless you plan to stay crammed in the venue for the entire night while guessing when your artist is playing, it's too much of a gamble to join the queue and wait.

In a move from the underground to the above, we head to Queen's Hall in State Library Victoria for Mind Gamers. Fronted by eclectic French electronic artist Sebastien Tellier (while also featuring Shags Chamberlain, Daniel Stricker of Midnight Juggernauts and John Kirby of Blood Orange), this is only the band's second performance. Walking in the room with past knowledge of the respective members' works, one could easily expect a more fragmented and experimental approach to electro-pop, but the results are a synth-pop-meets-house style, which is perhaps best personified by the group's reinterpretation (or heavily sampled version) of Prince's When Doves Cry, which they completely make their own with a more hyper/modern-based approach. It is with the act's final track - a version of Tellier's La Ritournelle - that leaves a mentally scarring mark. A borderline-creepy, fully made-up bed has been sitting among the crowd for their entire set and now Tellier performs, quite suggestively, on the bed. And, ah, well - in it, heart-shaped pillows and all. An interesting way to 'round out the hub for tonight, without question.

It's a mad dash from there to catch the tail end of Pearls wrapping up affairs at The Toff In Town. We only manage to hear the final notes of the band while ascending the endless staircase leading up to the venue despite there being half an hour left on the clock according to our calculations. With most of the venues calling it after midnight, it's a coin toss to go out and get involved in the late-night program of the CBD's more electronic-inclined venues. Coming up heads proves more that a good enough reason to see acclaimed Melbourne DJ/producer Brooke Powers get behind the decks back at Hugs & Kisses. After an exhausting boogie and with a few more spikes left in the week, it's time to call it a night. But, there is movement on the main stage as four-piece Glamouratz round out the venue and the three-vocalist approach just keeps you there. It's hard to look away as the band repeatedly call for the crowd to "take off their pants" (fortunately/unfortunately no takers) and offer this weird and wonderful moment to cap off the night.