Review: TR/ST
Hamer Hall, Melbourne – June 4
TR/ST was a music performance with heart-pumping club music in a punk concert/performance from queer hardcore sounds to the gentle noise of freedom as a piano solo that felt like Lou Reed being channelled through Tom Waits and into the soul and body of Robert Alfons.
Alfons was swirling, singing and slaying the stigmatisation of difference in an almost drunken, out-of-it sensation with a ‘I don’t give a fuck’ persona, dragging his microphone stand across the stage in fits of seduced rage. The ethics of his intimacy and honesty were pumped hard into the grandeur of Hamer Hall. An odd venue for an anarchist-driven steampunk atmosphere; we had allocated seats, which transformed instantly when Alfons arrived on stage. Hamer Hall became standing- and dancing-room only. His gawky and almost awkward style of performance, with muffled nasal ranting, was offset by the mid-pause section in the performance. The auditorium fell silent and a single spotlight lit his grand piano. The ear-splitting rumbling bass and DJ beats softened into a poetic form of compositional simplicity with undertones of Lou Reed’s Such A Perfect Day.
The queer gothic punk velocity of TR/ST was exciting. Even though the artist is inspired by the Pet Shop Boys and other musical icons of ’80s gay pop. Robert Alfons’ appetite for late-night psychodrama was like a passage of resistance with influences of Iggy Pop, The Ramones, The Clash, The Cure and a Sex Pistols night of anarchy, though complex melodies, loops and bass hooks that sent the crowd roaring.
The performance was dark and funky with synthesised trip-hop techno bass and drumbeats and almost epileptic lighting states. It reminded me of a 3am nightclub moment in Berlin, where the act is heard loud but hardly seen through the moody lighting and smoke machine fog that clouded the performers into silhouettes, which suited the neo-gothic punk nature of TR/ST.
Supporting act was Japanese artist Nina Utashiro, who was energetic, raw and sexy. Utashiro pumped out hardcore rapid rapping hip hop verses as a stance of resistance to the conformity of her life. The sound was a heart-pounding techno drum and bass, and Utashiro’s erotic, freaky and funky persona suggested Salome’s Last Dance, hypnotising the audience with her swirling hips, slender arms and golden whiplashing hair.
The dazzling backlit strobe lighting, permeating the constant stream of haze from the smoke machine, created a fire and brimstone effect. Utashiro’s mousey vocals bubbled out hopeful possibilities of a new queer female world order and shouted down the barbed wires of conservatism that would wake the dragons of Valhalla.
4 out of 5 stars
Review by Christos Linou
