Moving from cosmic sloppy to disjointed trap music, George Clinton & Parliament Funkadelic proved to be anything other than what they were billed as. Returning to Australia as part of a surprise worldwide tour celebrating 50 years since his first hit-single, Clinton and this latest iteration of P-Funk played a long and arduous concert in at Max Watts.

The 76-year-old took a backseat to the underwhelming display onstage featuring a bric-a-brac of various styles that laboriously blended and opposed each other. The set started with a strange presentation of trap music with a group of rappers spinning some middle of the road rhymes.

This was compounded by an overabundance of hype brought by the sweaty gentlemen who fumbled around the stage and pleaded with the audience to raise their hands and engage in the half-baked bacchanalia.

Clinton occasionally got on the mic, but was overpowered by a plethora of untalented and inharmonious singers. His mic even malfunctioned, most likely from inactivity while the rest of the "band" cavorted about the stage. It was difficult to recognise many of the songs given how muddy and incoherent the group sounded.

While Clinton chimed in for a slightly more lucid and larger role on hits like Flash Light, P-Funk (Wants To Get Funked Up) and One Nation Under A Groove, the songs were incredibly slow. There was no sense of getting up for the down stroke because we had not been sufficiently warmed up to get down.

Given the heritage of this Godfather Of Funk, the audience were grateful for the presence of this king amongst funksters. Yet his phantom-like presence made this surprise show sad and frustrating. This treat felt more like a trick; a P-Funk cover band posing as the real deal.