Four Tet @ Sydney Opera House

FOUR TET @ Sydney Opera House

Wednesday January 6th 2016

One may wonder as to the logic of putting a dance/electronic musician in the Sydney Opera House Concert Hall. After all, the legendary Giorgio Moroder kicked off his set in the basement – why not keep the party there, where there’s adequate room to shake one’s groove thing?

Maybe it’s the size of the audience drawn by Kieran Hebden, AKA Four Tet – or more likely it comes down the scale and ambition of his lighting rig, one so accomplished that it actually drew attention to possibilities you may not have even known the venue had.

It started off gently, as Hebden humbly made his way to the desk centre-stage, bathed in blue light. With no support act, and no-one else other than cameramen onstage, he ushered us into his aural landscape with the soothing ebb and flow of an electronic tide. The centrepiece of the lighting rig, a prism of icicle-like tendrils dotted with lights, blipped and booped accordingly, giving only the bare hints of what was to come.

After 15 minutes, the bass kicked in. A few outliers stood up, sick of being relegated to their seats, and then the whole house was on its feet. The Concert Hall became a dance hall in a matter of seconds.

Every possibility was teased out of the visual display, pulsing and shifting colours while carefully placed strobes and patterns lit up the waving arms of the crowd. Hebden himself kept his head down, singularly concentrated on maintaining our hypnotic state – his only eye contact was an adorably awkward wave as he entered and left.

In true club form, the music never let up. Hebden guided us expertly through his expansive discography, with that chest-thumping bass carrying all the way through to the finale of Morning. Listening to the glorious raga vocals of Lata Mangeshkar as the bulbs flickered and faded was like watching the sun rise after a long night of partying, and the rapt audience was already up to give its ovation as Hebden stepped into the shadows.

Seats be damned, this was a show that tapped into that most significant element of dance music: it left us feeling alive.