Live Review: The Comet Is Coming

The floorboards were creaking as an eager audience filed into Magic Mirrors Spiegeltent. This event landed on the penultimate day of Sydney Festival 2017, which again hosted a stellar array of breakthrough artists and veterans, talented and unique international and local acts alike.

The Comet Is Coming exists in the former of both aforementioned categories. Fresh from their 2016 Mercury Prize nomination, this exciting trio of East Londoners showcased their eclectic electronic talents live in a performance brimming with ferocious and at times awe-inspiring energy. The three live up to their billing of "Apocalyptic space-funk", taking us on a journey through caliginous and cluttered streets to far-flung deserts before triumphantly breaking through the stratosphere. The synth sounds provided by Danalogue The Conqueror (aka Dan Leavers) were seldom soft and swept the audience off its feet, whirring them into a frenzy of arms and legs as King Shabaka (aka Shabaka Hutchings) peppered the digitised disasters with his own cool chaos, inflicted with an alto-sax.

Drummer Betamax Killer (aka Max Hallett) created beats reminiscent of the afro-funk movement brought from West Africa to London in the '70s. Hutchings and Leavers pitched in to create a sound that crossed genres and cultures. The result was a spine-tingling melee of melodies stretched and contorted to the point of being unrecognisable. The afro-funk, jazz, dub- and space-infused techno sounds converged in the primal feast that is Space Carnival, an indefatigably groovy tune with shades of Sun Ra and Fela Kuti, but with an electronic root that sets it apart from those giants of afro- and space-funk.

As the lights went from sporadic buzzing to crazed flailing and then the final explosion of pure white light, an undeniable cosmic journey concluded. The floorboards creaked but, as if returned from a rendezvous with ET, the audience was unsure of what they'd witnessed, such was the ineffable performance of The Comet Is Coming.