Live Review: Ducks On A String, Sprawl, Zyklus, Agamous Betty & The Gothic Circus

Thursday evening saw a final show for local experimental act Zyklus. The local two-piece noise act will be spreading their wings and moving across country to try their luck in “a bigger pond”. As such they brought together a collection of local acts they’ve shared the bill with over the years to say goodbye to Perth.

Up first were Agamous Betty & The Gothic Circus. The set was an interesting fusion of alt-pop and poetic lyrics, creating a sound that could almost be described as post punk cabaret. Most songs were thundering eight or nine minutes, for instance Eating Pussy, which came to a screaming crescendo with one of the crowd invading the stage to dance along with the band.

Zyklus were up next with the duo swapping back to their regular electric guitar/drums configuration. Where the previous set had pop hooks and melody, this was replaced with atonal noise and dissonance. Sounding like an analogue Whitehouse, the duo played a collection of songs that was something akin to a catharsis or even an exorcism. What we got was driving drums and a guitar used more for texture than tone combined with vocals spat at the audience like a threat. Zyklus have a hugely exciting no-wave sound to be reckoned with.

And how to describe Sprawl? Possibly one of the weirdest acts we’ve ever seen sans costume. Consisting of a traditional three-piece configuration (bass/guitar/drums) augmented with samples from a laptop that was fighting a Windows Update. They’re probably best described as funk-punk, with obvious influences such as Mr Bungle and Primus. Although they were obviously having fun, continuously bantering with the audience, it wasn’t a sound that really grabbed my attention.

Finally headliners Ducks On A String took to the stage. Unfortunately for them the Thursday evening audience appeared to have waned, leaving only a few people to enjoy their set. Describing themselves as a “post-everything” band, they were definitely the most ‘traditional’-sounding band on a night full of experimental sounds. Their loose-set was unfortunately cut short when the band mistook some equipment failure as the Rosemount mixing engineer dropping their mics.