Melbourne’s Damn Arms played a compelling set of raucous electronic art punk. It’s been a busy few months for the quartet first a tour with Mercury award winning fluoro advocates Klaxons and dance punk luminaries Cut Copy. On top of their support credentials, which also include a comprehensive tour of the UK with Test Icicles and ¡Forward, Russia!, they released their debut album The Live Artex in November. Produced by Nick Littlemore of Pnau who has also worked with the likes of Lost Valentinos and Mercy Arms, it’s sure to be an intriguing listen.
The night started off with local avant punks, Skeletons. Unfortunately due to an overly long game of pool downstairs I missed out on most of their performance. I arrived for the last two minutes of their set which involved pounding bongo drums, stabbing synths and a saxophone played through an effects pedals. It was a little disorientating arriving in the midst of this sonic maelstrom. I can only imagine what the rest of their set sounded like, judging from my last experience with them I can guess it would have been superb.
Plug-In City played next with a punk-funk tinged electro-pop sound. Taking a different approach to the average electronic band they used a sampler to play a backup track of glistening synth arpeggios and incandescent blips rather than use a keyboardist. This gave all their songs a really cool intro however they soon got drowned out by the live instrumentation. This is unfortunate as this aspect of their music is what makes their recent self titled EP so catchy. Their funky basslines and angular guitar reminds me of New Order. They played most of the tracks from their Modular released EP. The crowd seemed distant and indifferent for the bands first visit to Adelaide, probably due to their unfamiliarity with the band.
Damn Arms graced the stage a little past midnight. Intense guitars riffs and spaced out synths got the previously unresponsive crowd moving. After several visits with the likes of Something for Kate, Midnight Juggernauts (for at least two tours) and the previously mentioned Klaxons they appeared to have a dedicated following. They played a mixture of material from their album as well as their previous Patterns EP. They even dedicated their song Please Pass Me My Anti-Robotics to “the freaky robot predator things downstairs” in Enigma. For some reason they felt like a space age Nirvana. Having never seen Damn Arms they definitely fulfilled my expectations and played an exuberant and tight set.
to listen to their music now on 
