Live Review: Now Or Never @ Royal Exhibition Building, Melbourne

Now Or Never (NON) poses a quandary. As the successor to Melbourne Music Week (MMW), the winter festival is now in its second year, but even with Elise Peyronnet still artistic director, it seems too similar to RISING.

Flamboyantly avant-garde, NON was launched to promote ideas, art, sound, technology and innovation, yet it has already become predictable.

Gone is the mischievousness of MMW. Remember when, in 2013, the local I Oh You label crew threw a party on the mezzanine in Flagstaff Station? Or when, in 2017, Munich's DJ Hell shockingly played in St Paul's Cathedral? Or when, in 2019, celebrating MMW's 10th anniversary, German electro-punks DAF rocked the Melbourne Town Hall with their first – and only – Australian performance? NON needs more subversion, more disruption, more BRAT.

This year, NON's theme is 'Look through the image', with an emphasis on visuals—appropriate in the Age of Aesthetics. The hub of its live music programme is again Carlton's Royal Exhibition Building (REB), with the same layout as 2023, down to the solitary stage and unilluminated, mazelike no-go areas.

The grand Italianate venue, a UNESCO World Heritage Site, hosted raves in the '90s—the likes of Luke Slater (who, incidentally, has the dance album of 2024 in LB Dub Corp's Saturn To Home), Groove Armada, and The Avalanches billed at Halcyon Knights Y2K0! on New Millennium Eve. But despite repurposing REB as a warehouse space, NON isn't fully utilising it. 

Naarm/Melbourne is historically recognised as a techno satellite city—Stable Music has existed for two decades. Fortunately, the crew's subcultural party delivered some otherwise missing surprises, booking the mythic techno combo Sandwell District in an Australian exclusive—the significance of which has inevitably been lost on mainstream media outlets.

Absurdly, Sandwell District are being positioned as a legacy act, although their music is radically atemporal. The West Midlands DJ/producer Karl "Regis" O'Connor—a pioneer of Birmingham techno—conceived Sandwell District as a subsidiary of his Downwards Records alongside Peter "Female" Sutton in 2002.

Rebooted two years later, Sandwell District evolved into a trans-Atlantic studio collective with a couple of old pals from the circuit: New Yorker David "Function" Sumner and Los Angeles' Silent Servant (Juan Mendez). Mendez would also serve as art director.

Sonically informed by Basic Channel's dub, Jeff Mills' minimalism, and Carl Craig's ambi-noir excursions, the trio developed a tenebrous and desolate post-industrial techno while cultivating mystique with anonymous—and rare—white labels. Sandwell District's ascent paralleled that of the Berghain nightclub, Berlin's unofficial headquarters. In 2010, the fold unveiled a classic album, Feed-Forward.

However, as individuals, Sandwell District always emitted a random and anarchic energy—the relationship between Regis and Function was infamously toxic. At the end of 2011, Sandwell District signalled its demise. Mendez subsequently declared it "a glorious death, not a mercy killing" on Tumblr.

Earlier that year, Sandwell District toured Australia with the proto-EDM Creamfields (Deadmau5 headlined)—but, after hours, they memorably DJed a fabled underground night at Melbourne's Mercat Basement, vintage footage of which is discoverable on YouTube.

In 2023, there was renewed activity in the Sandwell District camp with the reissue of Feed-Forward, followed by a tantalising retrospective, WHERE NEXT?. Yet, tragically, Mendez passed last January in harrowing circumstances. Meanwhile, Function and Regis have gigged as Sandwell District with a new audio-visual show – though they quietly cancelled Primavera Sound.

Stable's stacked programme straddles techno, industrial and darkwave – with Sandwell District joined by First Nations electronica polymath Naretha Williams, NY DJ Veronica Vasicka and Brit IDM stalwart Clark. Alas, Williams is scheduled too early for punters at 6 pm; the Wiradjuri woman deserves greater prominence.

As the founder of the archival Minimal Wave Records, Vasicka is herself a curator. But, for a New Wave connoisseur, her selections are unexpectedly pounding. She closes with a dramatic transition into a remix of Bronski Beat's gay anthem, Smalltown Boy, which just turned 40 and recently went viral on TikTok. The REB rumbles.

Chris Clark is perceived as 'IDM' due to a long-running affiliation with Warp Records (and he's notably credited on Jon Hopkins' upcoming album RITUAL). Latterly, he's established himself as a film composer. Clark brings both those experimental and cinematic facets to NON.

Initially, the auteur's transportive show evokes John Foxx's sublime Tiny Colours Movies at ACMI in 2008. There's a glitch, but transcending genre conventions, Clark swerves into Teutonic electro (very redolent of a menacing Anthony Rother), breakbeat and epic drum 'n' bass – to the crowd's fervour. Still, visually, it's unimaginative, the screen rippling with infinite lines.

Sandwell District's synesthetic hybrid AV spectacle pays homage to Mendez, opening poignantly with his ruminations. The duo's set is barometrically sequenced, building steadily with aerial dubby techno into a thunderous rave. It's more upfront than their recorded output.

Sandwell District introduce distorted punk and classic house edits (with an echo of Lil' Louis' 1989 French Kiss) into shuffling techno. They nod to Mills with his Step To Enchantment. The show eventually winds down with accents of Detroit melancholia.

Sandwell District's imagery is hauntological, if unsettling, with faded wallpaper patterns, ghostly photographic negatives and enigmatic inscriptions ("humanity is the devil") – the hues grey, sepia and algae-green. It feels like nostalgia, corrupted.

Maybe the evening's ultimate revelation is witnessing the Sandwell District core so in sync. On a podium, Function and Regis are the antithesis of extrovert superstar DJs, but the pair lean into each other – and the former spontaneously claps. It bodes well for the future.