Live Review: Goblin, Miles Brown

One of Melbourne's few thereminists, Miles Brown certainly captures the crowd's imagination as he claws at thin air and what appears to be an invisible instrument to produce a wild electronic sound. A member of Melbourne's The Night Terrors, Brown may not come to us with the dignified poise of Clara Rockmore but he certainly knows how to weave an eerie otherworldly groove on one of electronic music's more fascinating instruments. Brown does a commendable job warming up the crowd ahead of the gothic horror fantasy of Goblin.

It's perhaps a good thing that Dario Argento failed to secure the services of Pink Floyd to soundtrack his lurid blood-stained horror films. It presented Goblin with a golden opportunity to become his house band, soundtracking many classic Argento films. Deploying sound effects they unleash the bats and women shriek on a backing track. There is an awkward pause before they start playing selections from the soundtrack to Argento's supernatural murder mystery Deep Red. Produced in the '70s, the soundtrack effortlessly brings together a plethora of references to back-in-the-day influences. They move from a low-slung, heavily grinding, subdued funk to glam before retreating to balls-out, heavy, prog rock freak-outs to create a sinister fusion of styles that all fit together perfectly. As their tunes crescendo, it is not hard to imagine yourself running away from the evil that lurks in shadows. “It took us 40 years to get here and somehow we have managed to play Melbourne twice in less than a year,” says keyboard player Maurizio Guarini with a laugh. In between songs Goblin present as a relaxed, good-natured bunch that, after all these years, still enjoy just rocking out. In between dispensing some killer licks on his Minimoog, Claudio Simonetti keeps busy taking lots of photos of the audience. Later he quips that guitarist Massimo Morante can't stay to play a long encore as he soon has to keep an appointment with a girlfriend. After Goblin have more or less played the entire soundtrack of Deep Red they start dealing in greatest hits, beginning with music from Zombi, which was Argento's re-edit of George Romero's classic Dawn Of The Dead. It's not long before Morante straps on an electric bouzouki and we are singing along with the “la-la-la”s of their bewitching theme to Suspiria. Simonetti applies a vocoder effect to his voice and invites us to dance to Tenebrae, which starts off sounding like electro rock'n'roll in the vein of Telex before creeping into more psychedelic territory. While bands of this vintage sometimes exhibit a certain sloppiness, Goblin seem to have become even better with time and they move through complex arrangements with precision and ease. This evening's gig delivers on all levels and provides us with a rare opportunity to see a truly seminal band from the '70s perform some of their greatest hits.