Locals My Disco are a band unlike any other in Melbourne. The trio are famous for their sparse instrumentation, oddly disjointed lyrics and stripped-back sensibility. If their music was a landscape it would be a stark plain of Tattoine-like landscape, bare, barren and open. You’d expect this to have an alienating effect on listeners, but somehow the sound manages to be both awkward and strangely melodic, as if the omission of notes creates the illusion of shape. Tonight they’re playing in The Rumpus Room, the Melbourne International Arts Festival’s musical hive of activity, better known as the gargoyled and dimly-lit cavern that is The Forum Theatre.

The Forum has put on its best tonight. It’s filled with flowers that cast creepy graveyard shadows on the walls. The room is almost full, the crowd buzzing like a hive of bees, hovering from flower to yeasty flour – sure enough, the tables are already a forest of beer bottles. It’s into this environment that drifts the deceptively sweetly-sung tunes of locals Your Animal. Sometimes crooningly saccharine and sickly seductive, the trio – including ring-in guitarist Amanda Roth – filled the theatre with harmonies. Their voices seem to float around the humming crowd like a damaged butterfly, buoyed up on powdery wings, on draughts of sweet longing. Soft purple and blue lights danced around them, adding to the ethereal feeling. Singer Julie Montan was an elegant figure swathed in black, her voice rising and falling on invisible zephyrs. This band are still young, as evidenced by a few bung notes at the end of their set, but charming nonetheless.

Beaches have gotten a lot of press over the last year – they forged something of a reputation of indie superband of last year’s festival season. Featuring members of Love of Diagrams, Spider Vomit and Panel of Judges, and trailing many rave reviews, I was rather eager to check out these guys. Imagine my deflation when it turned out that we had another grunge-revivalist band on our hands. It’s just a bunch of riffs ripped off from Sonic Youth, uninspiring drum fills and nails-on-a-chalkboard lyrics. The singer sounded like a walrus howling into a tunnel. Added to this was the lazy use of repetition. Prog bands can sometimes get away with repeating a line of music, because it draws you into an almost trance-like state – here we had sonic looping, without the magical element that keeps you interested. Those looking for a new take on Sonic Youth or vintage Hole will be sorely disappointed.

It was doubly exciting then when My Disco emerged and proceeded to rip us a new arsehole with their abrasive riffs and thumping elephantine drum beats you can feel inside your chest cavity. Their sawing intro was hypnotic in its simple intensity – this is repetition done well. There’s something primal and totally raw about this band, born from looking into the heart of your musical soul and ripping out its guts. It’s not so much about stripping back, but looking for the essence of the sound. The angular guitar licks are an excellent conduit for emotion.

The first half of the set included a lot of new stuff, which while still carrying their signature hard-edged sound and bare instrumentation, felt something less diamond-sharp than we are used to. A Christ Pendent Comfort Her Neck was one stand-out, with its artful use of sound and silence, the stark one-note riffs and bass lines interweaving, creating some kind of tapestry at once awkward and resonant. The the other end of the scale is possibly the most easy-going of My Disco’s tunes, Paradise. While still sporting the signature angst, this tune had a more discernible tune, thanks to the rolling drums, which seemed to rise and fall on an invisible wave.

The older sounds were immediately recognisable, even to the layman – the gravity of Land is undeniable. You Came To Me Like A Cancer Lain Dormant Until It Blossomed Like A Rose marked the set’s high-water mark – the track was filled with pure elemental intensity and firey, splintered riffs that rained down on the packed dancefloor. This is a band that specialise in tight, visceral dream sounds that throb and slice through the atmosphere. Earplugs are non-negotiable, unless you want to indulge in a touch of industrial deafness. My Disco are that rare thing – a band who does no encores, yet never plays long enough. The set ends, and it sounds like something unfinished.

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