Live Review: Mura Masa

A pulsating beat sends vibrations right through our bodies as Mura Masa aka Alex Crossan makes an exciting entrance to the stage. The one-man-band kicks off his set surrounded by instruments, with electronic and acoustic drum pads and keyboards at his fingertips and a guitar draped around his shoulder. He is totally in control of the sound he wants to make and instinctively knows how to make us move. He begins with Messy Love and starts off by singing his own vocals over the top of his alluring beats.

Crossan has a few friends helping him out tonight, and he welcomes them to the stage to lend vocals as he works up a sweat mastering a storm of bombastic sounds. “Stick those asses out and shake them,” shouts vocalist Cosha, who joins in to bump and grind along to the certified banger Nuggets. Fliss then swaps in on vocals for a few crowd favourites including 1 Night and Complicated. Both singers bring huge energy to the stage with crazy good dance moves and huge vocals alongside Crossan’s grimey beats with huge drops, flashing strobe lights and engaging visuals to overload our senses. “Melbourne, we didn’t come here to fuck around. When the beat drops I wanna see all of you lose your shit,” says Fliss. The crowd goes wild as the sounds of tribal drumming reverberate throughout the theatre.

Crossan has the ability to mesh together a random combination of electronic sounds, percussion and vocals into an immaculate composition of intriguing electronic dance pop music. He’s not big on showmanship in his live performance and likes to stay in the shadows for most of the set, but he really connects with the crowd through his hard-hitting production behind the scenes while the guest vocalists take the limelight.

Fliss adopts an autotune effect over the top of her vocals for some of the more electronic heavy tracks. She absolutely steals the show with a huge vocal moment during her performance of Who Is It Gonna B while Crossan drives a momentous pace to build up a soaring crescendo of explosive instrumentals. Tonight is the last show of the FOMO 2019 tour and also the last for Mura Masa, who is heading back home tomorrow. The show goes out with a bang for a big finish as both Cosha and Fliss join in for an explosive encore with Firefly.