Live Review: ET15: A Celebration Of 15 Years Of Elefant Traks

R&B duo Sietta kicked things off with powerful vocals and electric guitar. They warmed up the crowd well with songs that had great attitude and a complex beat.

Jimblah proved a fiery MC full of strong political messages, coupled with a decent singing voice. His set highlight was an a cappella verse on Aboriginal rights, which culminated in a chant of “Fuck the Intervention!”

The ARIA-nominated Horrorshow roused the crowd to a frenzy, with arms bouncing all the way to the back row. The cinematic and poetic duo told the story of how they signed to the label in 2008 after spending years watching as fans from the front row. Then they delivered their crowd favourite, The Rain, in a flurry of passion and pride.

The hip hop crew The Herd is made up of the founding fathers of Elefant Traks and they turned the gig into a proper party counting down their biggest hits in chronological order. Joyful and so obviously having fun, the collective struck a chord and vocalist Jane Tyrrell said it best with a smile, “You're a rowdy mob, aren't cha?” before launching into The King Is Dead, the crowd singing along to every word.

Hermitude played their mix of urban electronica in style with a great visual film projection going on behind their decks. Their finesse on keyboards and drum machine were impressive and they delved back into some of their very early works in honour of the celebration.

The show finished with an epic finale featuring a whole host of collaborative songs with almost every single artist signed to Elefant Tracks, from Joelistics and The Tongue to The Last Kinection. Jane Tyrrell tested out one of her new solo tracks and The Herd's Unpredictable was huge - everyone jumped on stage and partied, Jimblah brought out a huge, yellow, number5 cake and the audience sang Happy Birthday.

Celebrating 15 years, over 13 artists and 50 albums, the Sydney hip hop scene's premier independent record label Elefant Traks took it up another notch on the first of two birthday gigs set for the weekend.

Lorin Reid

It was an elefant stampede as Elefant Traks rounded off a huge weekend of 15^th birthday celebrations on Saturday night at the Red Rattler, the record label throwing the last of four massive parties to celebrate the momentous event.

Sydney ET recruit Sky'high (Skh'ai Gerrey) kick-started the night, after arriving fashionably late, who with her tough as nails persona, set the tone of the night.

Next up, and sporting a hangover from the previous night's concert at The Metro, was Joelistics who joked around saying, “I've had about four Nurofen today, a half chicken and chips... It's just one of those days.” The highlight of his set was when he was joined on stage by Sietta's Caiti Baker and James Mangohig for a rendition of You Am I's Heavy Heart.

Ozi Batla was the next up and he surprised the crowd (and Jeswon) by inviting Urthboy and Jeswon up onto the stage. There was a notable “Ohhh shit” from Jeswon, who had arrived moments earlier. You could say it was a rousing political performance with the guitar player saying “What percentage of c*nts are racist in this country?” to which Ozi Batla replied, “All I'm sure of is that 100 per cent of racists are c*nts!” Before launching into a rendition of The Herd's 77%.

Jane Tyrrell lit up the stage in her solo performance, playing a sneak exclusive of Paul Kelly hit, Stolen Apples Taste The Sweetest. 

The Last Kinection had the whole crowd “getting low” as Joel Wenitong held a video camera and filmed the audience as we obediently got down on the ground then bounced. Highlight song was Happy People.

The Tongue wasted no time getting straight into his set, with yet another political statement, “There's a very bad and evil demon in charge of this country at the moment; you've got to keep in your minds the idea of what you want this country to be and the idea of the Australian dream.”

After what was a very long but high energy night filled with die-hard Aussie hip-hope fans, Urthboy finally took the stage, supported by Jane Tyrrell with a barrage of special guests invited up, including Jimblah, Solo from Horrorshow and El Gusto even jumping up on stage to do an impromptu scat. Urthboy finished by saying “Pretty much everyone who is here tonight, was also here last night, so salut to you.”

Deborah Jackson