Live Review: Seekae, Jonti, That Feel

The Metro was packed with a sold out crowd on Saturday night, all clamouring to see Sydney electronic whiz kids Seekae. First, though, they were treated to a very special performance by two founding members of Sydney band Ghoul, Pavle and Ivan Vizintin. Together as That Feel, with a minimal setup of bass guitar, drum pads and voice, they left everyone captivated and buzzing already.

Jovial Jonti took the stage telling us we all looked beautiful. “I feel like Fonzy,” he grinned in a leather jacket. “That is my name, Alfonso Jackson Junior Habibi. Welcome.” The jacket was soon discarded as he warmed up, transforming big hip hop beats into beautiful glitchy tracks topped with an angelic falsetto and endless enthusiasm.

Seekae bathed us in eerie blue light, plunging us into new depths of minimalist rhythms and emotion. They’re here in the run-up to their new album The Worry, out on Future Classic on September 12, and their live show is an immersive experience that traverses the soft and minimal and the outright dancey. In fact, with a strong waft of weed and the tones of a MelodyHorn in the air, you start to realise where the usually-icky term chillwave might actually be appropriate.

From the intense jungle beat and urgent lyrics of Test and Recognise to the evocative Another, the new record houses some of their most addictive material yet, and the crowd is way ahead, chanting the lyrics back at them. Seekae is makes electronic music but plays it like a band, refreshingly organic: frontman Alex Cameron (eclectically dressed in jeans, Nikes and some slick white 70s sunglasses) provides the haunting, often monotonous vocals, drum pads and jumps on the kit for favourites like 2008’s Void, while George Nicholas and John Hassell man samples, synths and guitars with an intuitive chemistry from either end of the stage.

The crowd stomped the ground manically when the band left the stage, summoning their return for an encore of the glitchy Centaur – a thumping beat over a sugary video game-style tune sending the audience into otherwordly bliss.