The first time I saw Darren Cross bring The E.L.F. out to play was at Dardanelles album launch at Roxanne. It was not an excellent choice of venue for either act, with the over-equipped stage, silly backstage half-wall thing and low ceilings.

I was there in the capacity of a Dardanelle’s fan but over the years I have seen Darren perform with Gerling and was anticipating a pretty active show nonetheless. What I got was a bloke, who looked like he’d just woken up and grabbed the cleanest smelling shirt and headed to the gig with his laptop under his arm. Which, I imagine, isn’t too far from the truth.

To be fair, Darren has only just started The E.L.F. idea up and it didn’t appear to be gaining any real momentum at that point; his rapport with the audience was non-existent. If they didn’t know any better they could be forgiven for thinking that the Dardanelle boys have roped in a mate at the eleventh hour to chuck some tunes on while they sound checked.

This was the first I had heard of The E.L.F. and despite that underwhelming performance I was keen for another look ’cause I was pretty sure there was something there. Having recently read up about Darren’s exploration of the one-man-band concept, watched the ‘Cockroaches’ clip on YouTube (where a billion or so other people have been before me) and, with a nostalgic wave to many drunken afternoons rocking out with Gerling at various festivals, I was pretty sure that this gig would be a much better operation than the paltry support gig I saw first.

Unable to convince my friends to leave the hardcore gig we were at, I at least talked my cab driver into hovering outside Brown Alley long enough for the waves of drunken, polo-shirt-wearing men to evaporate into another strip club while I got my bearings.

Wacky set up that club: up one flight of steps only to have to go straight back down another to get to the action. While the massive vaulted ceilings and beautiful stone work were a pretty sweet backdrop for some arse-shaking, it struck me that depositing a few wine barrels and Jim Beam posters around the place could make a world of bogan difference with very little effort. Nonetheless, the double storey cavity above the dance floor allowed for lighting that was more befitting of an act like this, than the previous gig I’d seen him at.

Happily, I beat Darren into the main room and watched the preceding DJ, and more importantly, the punters, for a couple of tunes. A few clusters of hot girls, under twenty five (wearing what looked like kooky, vintage frocks but were probably more expensive than my whole get up) all bopped away, doing that ‘let’s stand in a circle, gyrate at each other with our arms up and scare men out of talking to us’ thing. A Jack Black -esque fellow floated around taking pictures of said chicks and I thought to myself, “Oh, is this where the faux-lesbians in the ‘social’ pages in Beat Mag come from?”

In came The E.L.F, popping open the laptop. He took over the beat and within a moment had the dance floor packed. This time, he was ready for a bit of crowd interaction and actually broke his gaze on occasion to peer out over the laptop and grin at the reaction from the kids. A couple of girls approached him individually, yelling at him and doing “Oh! My! God!” hand gestures and I wondered if they thought he was a DJ.

If you have gotten this far in and still don’t know what The E.L.F. is doing here it is: mash-ups.

Wicked mash-ups with a grab of Technotronic here, a Kelis Kelis vocal there. Weaving Johnny Cash and June Carter into some thumping house beats, and throwing in Stevie Nicks (The E.L.F.’s EP namesake), Fat Boy Slim and Spank Rock for good measure were clever and often surprising choices, that the crowd reacted well to.

Running ‘Ice Ice Baby’ _and ‘Under Pressure’ vocals together with ‘Step By Step’ by New Kids On The Block was pure, sickening nostalgia and I loved it. I closed my eyes for a minute and actually thought I was at my twenty-first. In fact, if this was the competency of DJs who were doing the rounds when I did turn twenty-one, we might all have ended up a bit cooler. Injecting Stealers Wheel with disco sirens and ‘woo’s’ got the hot kids going and they all went crazy, arms in the air with The E.L.F. revving them up over the mic, recording himself and looping his own vocals back through another track.

Pulling out ‘The Seed’ by The Roots was a personal favourite, as that’s the one I force my guests to listen to when the coffee table gets pushed back for dancing after too many vino collapso’s on a Friday night.

The cynical me seriously doubted whether anyone in the room, besides myself, Darren and, potentially, Jack Black’s photographer doppelganger, knew any of the songs that were being sampled on this epic mixed tape. I was peering at the kids to see if their lips were moving; if maybe one of them had a parent with some cool vinyl at home… jury’s still out.

As is want to happen when you are the only person in a club writing things down in a note book, I did manage to attract the obligatory patron who assumes I need a bit of a hand with the write up. A rather drunken young fellow wanted to know if I wrote for “Beat or sumping” and upon receiving confirmation that it was the “sumping”, he looked thoughtfully through his beer goggles at me and said: “Y’know, I’ve seen Girltalk and this bloke’s betteren Girltalk. He’s way funner. Write that down!”

I too have seen Girltalk and not knowing which aspects this character thought were ‘funner’, I would like to clarify that The E.L.F. kept his strides on at all times during the set and despite bouncing along behind his laptop with hands poised over the mouse pad, ready to strike, he was certainly not as loose. Let’s say, as the one-man-party that is Girltalk.

However, the track that never ended brought together so many awesome samples, beats, memories and vibes that I give him kudos. It might not fit into my idea of ‘real music for musicians’ but it is a pretty sweet skill – to hear little grabs and be able to assemble them into a new dance track – keeping cynical old rock-pigs grinning with the simplicity of it all, and making the hip young fashionistas think they have discovered something new.

My one disappointment was that despite paying attention all the way through this set, I didn’t hear new single ‘Cockroaches’. I’m not sure this was the crowd for it though, either. I’m happy to report though, that I was right. That with a more suitable venue and audience, The E.L.F was able to pull off a fun set with heaps of dancing and happy punters. It was loads of fun, and for me, essentially an inspired DJ set that was a complete guilty pleasure. If I had any idea how to work my laptop, this is the sort of crowd-pleasing gear I’d want playing at my house party.