Live Review: HOLEANDCORNER

Winter dance music festivals don't usually click in Melbourne – even if held indoors. Way back in 2008 We Love Sounds struggled at Shed 4 despite the bill vaunting visitors like Lindstrøm, Ellen Allien and a resurrected Utah Saints. But this long Queen's Birthday weekend, the inaugural day-to-night “boutique” party HOLEANDCORNER has managed to pull off the impossible: bringing in a crowd. There is a growing anti-EDM movement in Melbourne that is ensuring hipster dance music festivals like Let Them Eat Cake and Listen Out, with their cred techno, house, progressive, bass and indie-electro acts, are transcending 'boutique'. And so the timing is perfect for HOLEANDCORNER – an impressive joint production from Matt Gudinski's Illusive and Fünf that will travel to Sydney after Melbourne. HOLEANDCORNER actually has Mexican food trucks outside – and, being at Central Pier's Shed 14, the Victoria Star boat, with DJs on two levels. Today any dude swaggering around in a Swedish House Mafia T-shirt will attract scowls. Instead the guys have donned skinny jeans – and a number have bushranger beards. One is spotted with a BPitch Control tote bag. Girls are in grungey beanies.

Most of the action at HOLEANDCORNER is to take place in Shed 14, with the live Xosar the sole international headliner to play the boat – at night's end, up against (the admittedly overrated) Guy J on land. Nevertheless, many punters are seemingly reluctant to cruise the Victoria Star for an hour-and-a-half at a time and miss a major drawcard. So much for techno seadogs…
While the promoters maintain that the choice of Shed 14 for HOLEANDCORNER is to “pay homage” to Melbourne's fabled rave epoch, it's not quite the grimy warehouse of yore. (Mind, Sydney's venue is the incongruously glitzy Home Nightclub.) The heritage-listed building, over 100 years old, has been treated to a Grand Designs-like makeover, with carpet (that isn't sticky or stained), swish bars and illuminated white sofas. The glamorous toilets might belong to a five-star hotel with their marbled fixtures and floral displays.

We arrive early at 1pm to catch two members of Illusive's synth-pop signings Clubfeet DJs – in fact, it's so ignominiously early that the cavernous Shed 14 is empty but for staff. Clubfeet are surely Melbourne's counterpart to Hot Chip – and this afternoon they blend low-key deep house with inflections of electro and techno. Visibility isn't great. The DJ console is shielded by a video screen, synced in with, not only the larger one behind them, but also banners throughout the venue. Regardless, the Clubfeet DJs may as well be playing in a bedroom. Poor lads.

Next is a capped and suitably hirsute Tornado Wallace – the cult alter-ego of local Lewis “Lewie” Day equated with 'slo-mo' house. His set is the event's most musically adventurous, spanning disco, deep house, retro-rave and '80s-moulded synth-pop. He drops records with vocals, guitars, epic drums and twittering birds. Plus Wallace spins some vinyl. A lone raver, in an Underground Resistance T-shirt, breaks into the Melbourne shuffle. For a minute it really feels like old times.

It's 4pm when Hot Chip DJs get the party officially started with a sound systemy DJ set – the now decently sized crowd stops chattering on the sidelines and boogies. The Brit indie-electro group, quiet of late, are reportedly slowly progressing on the follow-up to 2012's In Our Heads. Joe Goddard has notably taken time out to focus on his clubby side project The 2 Bears. Today it's Hot Chip's other frontman, Alexis Taylor, DJing alongside guitarist Al Doyle – they're meant to be accompanied by Felix Martin but he's mysteriously absent. Not that it matters. Hot Chip's quirky mix revels in '90s club culture as they DJ such classics as Green Velvet's Preacher Man – not to mention So Phat!'s twisted remix of Sheila E's '80s A Love Bizarre, which Solomun recently contemporised. Taylor picks up a mic sporadically to sing some Hot Chip favourites, live PA-style – the best being the dark Flutes. The Hot Chip singer, due to unveil a balladic second solo album in Await Barbarians, may be slight and geeky, yet he possesses a tremulous, soulful voice, redolent of Boy George.

Many of those at HOLEANDCORNER have come especially for Henry Saiz. The Spaniard is performing live in Australia for the first time as part of a three-man “band”': Saiz, on synths, is joined by multi-instrumentalist Luis Deltell (primarily on electronic drums) and vocalist Eloy Serrano, doubling up as VJ. Saiz' show, centred on 2013's debut album Reality Is For Those Who Are Not Strong Enough To Confront Their Dreams, is ambi-prog – innovative, deep, melodic and groovy. Live, it's way more 'big room' – albeit without the crass tropes of trance. Saiz could be Vangelis' true heir. Post-slot, he descends to the stage barrier and allows fans to take selfies with him.

It's now 7.30pm and Cosmin TRG leads the music in a very different direction. The Berlin-based Romanian specialises in the kind of pummelling, hard techno that is often branded the 'Berghain sound' (think Ben Klock) but, with his background in dubstep industrialism, he instills it with mystique, a few of his eerier, textured tracks possibly made by vampires in the Carpathian Mountains. Alas, the crowd isn't wholly feeling it. A shame.

American Matthew Dear, fresh from Ghostly International's 15th anniversary, is more modulated in his approach. Dear – in a black T-shirt, rather than one of his trademark dapper suits – has famously experimented with electro-soul on his albums, but tonight he's in Audion mode, expertly mixing strobey, slammin' techno in the Richie Hawtin tradition. The dancefloor is loving it. Later, Dear will play a HOLEANDCORNER afterparty. It's gonna be a long night.