Live Review: Basenji, Oscar Key Song, Michael Ozone

The Beach Road Hotel is notorious for its mid-week gigs, and pairing Basenji with Oscar Key Sung made for yet another wild Wednesday. There was not one still body in the room; the d-floor was on!

Michael Ozone opened the night, treating the early birds with some eclectic electro. His pan pipe-infused deep house took the room to a place that felt far, far away from Sydney.

Oscar Key Sung joined him on stage towards the end of the set showing his support by sporting an Ozone T-shirt. He began by wowing the crowd with his lavish dance moves and R&B vocals, proving that he is the closest thing to Frank Ocean that Oz has to offer, but with a fierce electronic touch.

Oscar Key Song was victorious as he battled audio issues signalling to the sound techs early on to “Turn up my vocals, I can’t hear shit.” The glitch in sound levels were noticeable in All I Could Do causing Oscar Key Sung’s timing to be slightly off in the first verse. But, the ardently rowdy crowd did not seem to notice, obligingly dancing themselves oblivious.

The shining star of the evening was Basenji. He dazzled with his high level of professionalism throughout his entire set, beginning with his version of Cosmo’s Midnight’s, The Dofflin. By this point the Beach Road was packed out with the dancefloor spilling out to well beyond the bar.

Throughout his show he played some old favourites including his own delightful remixes of Princess Superstar’s Perfect and Sisqo’s Thong Song. The set was cleverly peppered with his own releases such as Heirloom, which featured early, his version of Sable’s Foolin’, and his song Dawn wrapping the night up.

To top it all off the onlookers were spoilt with Basenji’s enthusiastic blonde curls which caught the punters’ attention as he danced, lip-synced and genuinely looked like he was having as much of a great time as everyone else in the room.