Live Review: WAMi Festival Showcase

The Community WAMi showcase was one of the last of them, kicking off with ambient two-piece Mostark on the Friday night of the festival. The setting, Ya Ya's, is a hard venue – a music destination venue on a strip that capitalises on passing trade, and the $15 cover charge and underground content kept the crowd sparse. Still, those who did attend were attentive, and were there for a reason. Lowaski was up next, dropping frequently from ambience into something much dirtier and then back again. The Boost Hero Man, a boy genius of sorts by reputation, shifted things into a set of more logical continuity and motion, constructing wide soundscapes with a simple, recognisable base, and then gently, but surely, messing with them. Assembly Line moved us into hip hop, following with a busy set, a little repetitive but with edges smoothed. Able 8, having made the pilgrimage to Melbourne, has returned briefly to his hometown and joined in on the gig while he was at it. He continued on the hip hop train, but with more variation and a cameo appearance or two. James Ireland returned us to ambience next with a set that was quick and instinctive. A highlight set of the evening, he finished ten minutes early, before Diger Rokwell, co-founder of The Community collective and the man behind this gig, took the headline spot at the end of the evening. This being Perth after 1am, most people had gone home to bed, but Rokwell played with conviction to a sparser room than he deserved. Master of the multi-task, a style complex and distinct, he wrapped up the evening with a patchwork orchestration of sounds from recently travelled-to countries mixed seamlessly in with other conventions of electronica. The next day, when he took out this year's craft award for Electronic Producer Of The Year, nobody was all that surprised.