Lab Styles @ The Excelsior


Lab Styles Sunday 15th @ THE EXCELSIOR HOTEL Surry Hills Written by William Now here’s a great example of change being a good thing. Afternoon electronica infiltrating the more traditional music vibe of The Excelsior Hotel Surry Hills. Every 3rd Sunday of the month from 5-9pm The Frequency Lab, a name synonymous with cutting edge electronica a la experimental tip, is presenting LAB STYLES. A free, yes I had to look twice at the flyer myself, free afternoon/evening combination of djs and live electronica. An intimate crowd of maybe 50-60 strewn throughout the place rocked up for the initiation night line up of, Ollo (dj set), Meem (dj set) Monkfly and Eli. Think early Frigid days at the Hoey except darker, more loungey and I’m talking about the lighting and furniture, we’ll get to the music soon enough. I was never a big fan of the Excelsior as venue but for this type of thing it really suits. Lab Styles is totally a chill, chat and vibe, optional boogie and enjoy good music set up. The sounds permeate throughout the place so there’s pool’n tunes out front, cosy lounge’n tunes inside or outside rollies’n courtyard tunes. You find yourself experiencing all the settings simply for the main reason that you can. There’s none of the stuck in one atmosphere vibe that many venues suffer from but anyway I digress for I’m 200 words in and yet what of the music?
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Ollo obviously sensed the mood and started the eve with a beautifully lazy DJ set. Flirting between the playfully quirky and the lusher end of electronica it had me vibing and lounging pretty comfortably in the couch zone. In turn Monk Fly’s live set came seamlessly thru from Ollo’s last track with a heavenly ambient segway then proceeded to roll up down and all around thru to warm down tempo instrumental hip hop onto dub step and back again. Somewhere in another seamless changeover point, that I again missed, Eli took to the turntables and directed the evening to some techy minimal dub step places. Of which, I was in my open-air courtyard phase of the evening and noticing there were traces of under the stars hip shimmying. At the outrageous hour of 8pm Meem took to the stage and DJ’d a great low key improvised set, that gently rocked and swayed itself seamlessly and at times humorously from a starting track of hip hop origins, thru to jazz, dub and beyond into forms I have no language for but that’s Meem for you. The close of Meem’s set at the ungodly hour of 9 pm is pretty much where I found my first gripe of the evening. Why not 10pm? But that was short lived, as you couldn’t really complain. Great crowd, well suited venue, good conversations occasioning a super laid back vibe with a seriously professional approach by the artists to provide the perfect soundtrack to a chilly Sunday afternoon evening. How much did all this cost again? If your into spending your lazy low key Sunday evenings immersed in the some of the best left field electronica Sydney has to offer then the next Lab Styles is May 20th. Did I mention it was free?