Setting: Dance Hall

Entering random contests means you sometimes win unexpected prizes. So I went with my free tickets to the Danforth Music Hall on Wednesday night for some dance music. It was a sparse crowd simply because of the venue's large size. There were 4 acts including 2 DJs. Though there was some dancing, most people were mostly inert for their sets.

The crowd was more welcoming of Chela, a singer from Australia. Armed with a Mac, some synth, and an excitable drummer, she ran through a quick set of dance songs. The arrangement was sparse but propulsive: mostly drums, some bass, and some skittering chords or riffs. Without a lot of melodic backing, she did wander a bit off-key. Understandable since most people struggle to stay on-key without chord accompaniment. Perhaps there are "chord" tracks for singers similar to a drummer's click track.

The head-liner was also from Australia, a duo called The Presets. I was interested to hear "actual dance music" as opposed to the current synth-pop cross-over fad from indie musicians (Austra, Metric, Kashka). It became clear that it was musically less complex in arrangement and beat. On the other hand, it was easy to dance to and simple to mix into a flowing, non-stop set. They covered their hits such as Young Man and This Boy's In Love. It could be dull watching two people fiddling knobs and banging metronomically on synth pads. Luckily, they had an interesting light show.

In addition to the venue's lights, their stage setup included dozens of hexagons laid out in honeycomb shapes. They provided lights and effects for the show including numerous colour changes, moving patterns, and dazzling pulses and flashes. I'm guessing the technology is quite similar to sending graphics commands to a computer monitor and a specialized controller would convert the instructions to coordinate the hexes. It was too bad no one snuck in a video game reference. I was hoping for an homage to Nibbles (the QBasic snake game installed on every PC) or perhaps Q-Bert.

I was probably too old to really love tonight's music. But I did sneak in a move or two, as much as my creaking body allowed.