With tickets to tonight’s show selling out over a month ago, they were the hottest in town and expectations were high. On everyone’s lips were questions on whether the Canadian duo were going to put on a better show than the last time they were out west with last year’s Parklife tour. Though no one could quite define what was wrong with said set, there was a genuine consensus amongst viewers that it had been quite underwhelming.

Tonight though, MSTRKRFT would be tucked away into the cave-like Ambar instead of the grassy plains of Wellington Square and somehow you knew the dirty and gritty club would be a far more suitable environment for their matching dirty electro.

Born from the break up of dance-punk duo Death From Above 1979, MSTRKRFT are one of the in demand remixers going around, having recently touched up Usher, Kylie and Bloc Party. As there are now more and more producers making the rounds as DJs, it always fronts the same conundrum of how much of their own original material do they play? Fans expect some originals and pay to hear them, yet its unlcear how much pleasure producers take in playing their own material from vinyl.

Crowd warming duties were assigned to Petrosex (does the man ever sleep?) and Tone who both did their best to get the bulging crowd up and excited. Most of the kiddies though, had already had their weetbix and were more than ready to get on the d-floor. With Fatcat having well gone to bed when little hand was past 1 and the big hand was about 6, Jesse F. Keeler and Al-P arrived behind the decks to a healthy applause and set out about getting things cranking. They immediately got stuck into their vinyl collection and got the 4/4 kicking. The bass felt really solid coming through the Ambar stacks and the kick drum was booming with their first few electro tracks. The DJ booth was packed for the start of the set with porn star moustached Keeler in white t-shirt and Al-P with baseball cap and hood up, no masks unfortunately. They stripped the sound back early, limiting it to some grinding and rhythmic house beats and slowly built it into a more hook laden mix. Vuvuvu got things moving and first single Easy Love went down a treat with all members of the packed dance floor. Some particularly young looking likely lads had brought their own gold face masks and even a snorkel to the dance floor and were getting love from the crowd in return. Dropping their own remix of _D.A.N.C._E, things started to get moving, even though the track is well past its used-by date. After some predictable love to the crowd from the mic, Keeler dropped the now compulsory Daft Punk track in One More Time before taking things a little bit harder with his own remix of DIM’s Is You. Continuing down the heavy electro road with some Boys Noize and Siriusmo, the dancing punters didn’t show any signs of tiring with the bangers flowing thick and fast. After a few more ciggies in the booth, the masters of their craft took their leave from the adoring crowd, with one FL spy reporting Keeler walking off arm in arm with two hot young blonde ladies.

Dispelling doubts about their party starting abilities, MSTRKRFT made a triumphant return to Perth that could have probably sold out a much bigger venue. There is always the dilemma of paying for superstar producers to DJ a set that any one of a number of Perth DJs could have quite easily have produced but that is another discussion for another day. Great atmosphere, great tunes, great venue…..Great night.