Live Review: Hermitude & Fishing

The young crowd started to make the small venue heave early, and it only took a couple of tracks from Sydney electronic duo Fishing's set before they'd won over the punters, who were certainly in the mood to party. Working on a laptop and a bunch of gizmos, Fishing started out with mellow grooves that were very danceable, working up from a slow head-nodding shuffle to full on hands in the air dancing by the time the set closed. Their performance was chilled out and friendly, and there's a sense of humour that they embrace and roll with, as did the punters. Even when things got borderline ridiculous with trilled out hip hop beats and pitch shifted rap vocals, the enthusiastic audience totally bought into the joke, and the extra spectacle added to the performance and really helped the group break away from the 'two dudes twiddling knobs' stage presence.

Hermitude revealed themselves onstage with the parting of a curtain and a cloud of smoke in proper rock star fashion, which after their massive 2012 they practically are. Choosing to play three smaller shows in their hometown instead of one massive show meant that everyone got to experience the party up close and personal. It's a massive favour to the audience, but the duo of Luke 'Dubs' Dubber and Angus 'El Gusto' Stuart did themselves a service by making sure they had a closer connection with the crowd. Dubs was wearing a strap on keyboard of some kind emphasising the rock'n'roll angle and what is almost certainly an iPad hung off El Gusto – he eventually rocked the crowd at a later point using nothing but a simple app on the device, elevating the toy's legitimacy to that of a real instrument.

Obvious hits got the biggest reaction, the crowd shuffled through the original version of HyperParadise, and then went nuts for the Flume remix. All Of You with its “Baby baby, look so good” hook caused hysteria, and a few older tracks from Tales Of The Drift awoke different sections of the room. Speak Of The Devil brought the house down as Chaos Emerald joined the boys onstage for a last minute energy party boost. Hermitude are capitalising on their well-deserved popularity spike of late, and if they keep up with shows like this it's only going to keep on rising.