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LIVE REVIEW: Movement - 'Dark As Hell, Transcendental & Angelic'

2 June 2014 | 8:20 pm | Gavin Butler

Movement’s show at Oxford St’s ‘Spectrum’ was something like being inside the dark and literal heart of Sydney’s underground music scene.

MOVEMENT’s show at Oxford St’s ‘Spectrum’ was something like being inside the dark and literal heart of Sydney’s underground music scene: throbbing with bass, beating under the orchestral heave of the drums, and thronging with the young and eager blood of as many musical pilgrims as the venue could contain.

Of course, ‘underground’ is a loose term to describe this band’s second sold out hometown show. These three young lads are levering their way into the collective musical consciousness with admirable gusto and astounding aplomb.

Awash in shrouds of fog and bathing intermittently in the strobed light that only partly illuminated the figures on stage, the aforementioned pilgrims stood enraptured by the weight and grandeur of the music, burgeoning into applause as each song wound out dizzyingly to its natural conclusion. And the band reciprocated the passion wholeheartedly, ceaselessly grateful and apparently genuinely stoked to be able to share their sonic vision—not to mention flair—with the loved-up masses.

MOVEMENT have attracted a lot of comparison to UK garage deities DARKSIDE, and for obvious reasons. They’re peddling the same brand of pure, uncut atmospheric beats: at once brooding and ethereal; dark as hell and yet in some way transcendental and angelic. They’re also crafting some of the most original instrumentation in the current Australian music scene.

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This performance, for me, seemed to channel something bigger, grander: something like those nocturnal, murky-dreamy movements of the godfathers of the genre, MASSIVE ATTACKcontained entirely within the not-so-massive shoebox of ‘Spectrum’. ‘Intimacy’ is a word that comes to mind—among others like ‘intoxicating’, ‘awe-inspiring’ and ‘pretty much just brilliant’.

Personal favourite and international attention-grabber ‘Ivory’ rung in at around the set’s midway point, the dizzying guitar solo screaming through the fog and met in turn by the ecstatic screams of the crowd. Shortly thereafter, and prefixed with the lead singer’s announcement that “We’re gonna try something here”, an utterly euphoric cover of BABY BASH’s ‘Suga Suga’ had everyone weak at the knees—a fitting chance for the vocalist to demonstrate the premium quality of his pipes. And demonstrate he did: his smooth, soulful croon proving more hair-raising in reality that in any studio cut yet.

Vision blinked in and out through the strobed fog; blood shook in the legs and the ears; and the hearty bass, the heady guitar swirls and the throbbing, body-high percussion had three of the five senses more than catered for. EP highlight ‘5:57’ rolled into ‘Us’; ‘Us’ rolled into ‘Like Lust’ for the grand finale.

And as the lights cut out, as the band gave one more heartfelt ‘thank you’ and disappeared from the stage and the last tendrils of fog drifted eerily throughout the room, the pilgrims were left stunned, satisfied, and probably more than a little enlightened. They all just had to find their shit again.

Words by Gavin Butler

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