Live Review: Holy Balm, Enderie, Phone, Sex Havers DJs

Tonight's supports unfortunately set a standard that simply couldn't be maintained by the headliners.

Sex Havers DJs delivered a series of intelligent and creative selections throughout the night. Offering a melange of '90s- and '80s-flavoured dance sounds with the occasional mainstream cut (INXS, The Prodigy and Janet Jackson) cleverly interspersed to rope in the crowd, Sex Havers did a commendably professional job as the night's curators.

Phone's set was a highlight, especially. A murky, noisy, hypnotic ooze of old-school electronics, slashing guitar textures, grinding synth lines and surprising deadpan humour, Phone's performance was reminiscent of the great Australian tradition of percussive electro-noise merchants like Primitive Calculators, The Scientists and (more recently) Perth's Snowman without feeling overly indebted to any of them. Truly excellent.

One-man-wonder Enderie offered a similar level of brilliance - albeit with a completely different vocabulary. Manning a small console of interconnected analogue electronics, Enderie delivered an unbelievably precise set of raw, lo-fi techno. The consistently high quality of the songwriting was remarkable. Doubly so, given Enderie's sound palette is heavily defined by snapping drum machine snares, filtered white noise and simple sample grabs.

By comparison, Holy Balm's set just couldn't quite measure up. Admittedly, the mix was a significant obstacle. Heavily weighted towards the bass and mids (and with significant amounts of reverb and delay layered on the vocals), the sound set-up left too many of the trio's songs defined by the housey bass-and-snares backdrop than the song's respective hooks and synth textures. But, there was also a sense of the band navigating a difficult transition.

Launching their newest, most song-oriented release Activity, Holy Balm's set seemed caught between a world of relentless groove ritualism and poppier, more structured material. The set featured highlights in both worlds. Activity lead single Fashion is transcendent and, throughout the performance, there were many times when the vocals, synths and rhythms connected to create an overwhelming, ecstatic experience. Unfortunately, the band's navigating between the two aesthetics meant the set never quite coalesced into the true sum of its parts.