Check out the madness in Stuo’s gallery

Imagine a dude standing in a concrete pipe using the acoustics to make his sweet voice echo ethereally around him as he tells you a tale, then imagine three other dudes with no care for socially acceptable self-expression, raging at the machine through their instruments. Put them together and you have HEALTH, a progressive experimental noise band from LA. They were in Perth for the first time at Becks Music Box for the Perth International Arts Festival, and they drew a surprisingly large crowd, considering their genre.

Mics are strewn across the stage floor to be grabbed when an extra bit of vocal is needed, or a different sounding one. John Famiglietti is mostly positioned centre stage with two metres of music tech at his fingertips, but in reality he spends the gig throwing himself from one side of the stage to the other, hair flying, totally absorbed in the music. “I’ll bet he gets laid a lot” said one punter nearby. Jake Duzsik handles most of the vocals but they are placed well within the mix so that they are unrecognisable as words, mostly they are airy, phosphoric melodies which contrast well with the total engagement of the other three members. (Actually, if you look up the lyrics, the words also juxtapose nicely with the sound of the vocals.) It is immediately clear that this will be an intense show, but the crowd are ready for the ride. As Becks wooden flooring violently vibrates, the ride is more than cerebral.

Take any 80s disco pop band, pump it so full of testosterone that it barely resembles the emasculated, malformed creature it once was, then plug it into an array of sound technologies to make it invincible and you have the schematic for making an audience forget themselves entirely and get lost in a world of noise that somehow resembles their own.

HEALTH makes intense, passionate, masculine music, not the masculine parody of a beer swilling bogan, or the waxed and scented hair styled version, and not the angry psychopath version either. It is as if they have incorporated all of the stereotypes of the past, with current technology to create something transcendent. No more does electro have to be tinny and bleepy, no more does rock have to be composed of uncomplicated power chords. Dance doesn’t need to be repetitive, and if you write lyrics that express an emotion, you don’t have to be in an emo/screamo band. ‘Experimental’ doesn’t mean ‘shit’. Even though their name wasn’t chosen to reflect anything about their band, it is fitting that their music epitomises a healthful balance of extremes.

Recorded, the sound is more industrially robotic, but live it has an organic intensity. The sound is still relentless, the drums put you out of sorts because the time signatures change, and not all members feel the need to be playing constantly. So for a part of a song, Jupiter Keyes will pause his guitar playing and stand statue-like holding a single note whilst other members thrash around on stage as they add their part to the sound. Just when you think he might be getting bored, he’ll swing around and belt a floor tom with drumsticks you didn’t see him pick up and he’ll do it with perfect timing.

From beginning to end, they spoke little; “Hi, we’re HEALTH from Los Angeles” after the first song, and at the end, “We’re not going to go off and come back on, we’ll just play some more.” Disappointingly, they only played one more, and it was really short and the crowd were left wanting more. They could have played their whole set again and the audience would have been pleased.

Following on from HEALTH was always going to be difficult, and local electro outfit The Transients had the unenviable job of trying to keep the crowd dancing. They didn’t succeed; except for about ten fans, everyone else moved toward the couches or the bar, or ‘outside’ to smoke while they killed time, waiting for the after party to begin.

After some bland but groovable tunes from Dub Get Dirty DJs it was time for the final act of the night. The Epic of Gilgamesh had spilled from the stage into the audience in a half circle of shirtless drummers and were really the only act that had much of a hope of following on successfully from the headliners. Not so many drummers this time, their faces were made up with silver or white grease paint, while the stage drummers wore petticoats. (wtf?) Led by Ninja Dom Pierce with the rest of Injured Ninja and French Rockets on stage in holocaust cloaks, members from Sugar Army, Mile End, Pond and Carbuncle on the floor belted their way through tracks composed specifically for the night by the two bands on the stage. While Steve Hughes took the guitar and vocal duties with synth noise help from the stage, Pierce stalked manically around the stage conducting the drummers before him and adding to the beat himself. The result was a tribal cacophony with undeniable catchiness that had people dancing in the melee and almost swallowing the drummers on the floor. A truly epic set, something that should happen more often.

Check out the madness in Stuo’s gallery