This Is Big: Fringe Festival2009, Civic Square, Canberra(07/02/09)

Mon 9th Feb, 2009 in Gig Reviews

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DID YOU MISS FRINGE OPENING NIGHT? CHECK IT OUT IN ALL IT’S GLORY HERE!

In order to combat this everlasting brutal heat regime in its finest hour, there is only one thing that one can do. Surrender in front of your air conditioner at home or attempt to overturn the regime by standing together as one in a public arena!

By the record numbers rolling through the city centre last Saturday, it was clearly evident that the majority was sick of being cooped up at home and chose the latter and endured the heat as one.

Kicking off festivities at 6 pm were local DJs k-rad and Simon who unleashed their killer dancing party tunes to the ever-growing crowd under the Fringe tent. Punters either had the choice of dancing along with the goodness or appreciating it from their seats and couches in the audience.

The first act of the evening was local songstress Chanel Cole and her crew The Midnight Enchantress. The New Zealand born singer had the ambition of stripping away the fame and recognition she received as a contestant on Australian Idol in 2004 and start anew with her own creation of lounge room jazz and spoken word delights.

Once everyone chowed down their share of multi-cultural food and beverages it was time to shake your hips and throw your legs up in the air as the breeze was changing and eventually blew in the Zawadi African Dancers. From the word go they brought the house down with their impressive traditional dance routines. After the first dance, everyone was ready to join in themselves and tried to mimic what they saw on-stage, but it was near impossible to. Those kids and adults dancing on stage made it look far too easy.

Once she made it through her sound check, recent Triple J Unearthed winner Abbie Cardwell and Her Leading Men delighted the audience with her popular and vibrant soft country rock tunes. Her music draws similarity to Kasey Chambers and Missy Higgins in both vocal harmony and melody but differs in her use of guitar solos and banjo sections. She was a clear favourite, I mean why else would she play twice throughout the Fringe Festival?

Changing the scene completely were local favourites Tom Woodward’s, The Orphanage. They began their set with an upbeat army/navy song driven by the folk and blues underneath the strong obscure lyrics. The sound behind the lyrics has clearly been constructed and mastered to perfection as each instrument behind the sound is required to create the musical soul behind The Orphanage. This sound was interchangeable as each song had a different riff and melody but had the same presentation as far as the average punter could tell.

To change the scene again were local hip hop gods D’Opus & Roshambo. These guys would make upcoming and aspiring rappers jealous as they are able to subdue the crowd and rock their socks off without really trying. D’Opus has proven that he is one of Canberra’s best DJs and had multiple opportunities to prove so with all the solos he has in a lot of the songs. But to dispel any competition and ridicule D and R prove that they are diverse and grabbed local MC Omar Musa out of the crowd and did a duo with him. Even by the end of their set the crowd were demanding more, so the boys came back onstage for an encore and dusted off The Basement.

After some down time recovering from D and R, fellow Canberra hip hop innovators Casual Projects were standing by to conquer the Fringe Festival as their own. Their set blasted off with their hit single Time and anyone who wasn’t on their feet was told off and shoved into the crowd. To pull off their stellar live shows Cas P needs all seven members to bring their own qualities into the equation and give it their all. It is evident that they do so for each show as their shows seem to get better and better and you’ll never get sick of seeing them.
They have worked on their crowd interaction techniques by asking the crowd to do different things such as clicking, waving, jumping and testing out re-configured versions of their songs.

Saturday night at Fringe Festival 2009 was big, but there’s plenty more where that came from with the festival continuing until 14 February.