This Wollongong rock duo is new to headlining arenas – but utterly match-ready

MUSIC
Iniko | The Awakening Tour ★★★
The Corner Hotel, July 3

Iniko steps onto the blue-lit stage, filling the packed room with their haunting celestial vocals. “Can I sing some new songs for you, is that OK?” the singer asks the crowd. They’re met with a cheer of encouragement.

Amassing over 6 million followers across Instagram and TikTok, this is the artist’s first Australian tour, sharing music from their yet-to-be-released new album. Identifying as genderless, they tell Archer Magazine: “I think my music has some correlation and interconnectedness to the queer struggle because I struggle every day to be queer”.

Alongside a strong soul base, their music is heavily influenced by rock and dancehall, which comes through in the strong guitar and drum accompaniment from the live band. Their sound drifts from soft ethereal tones influenced by their church choir roots to edgier, harder invocations, moving across the stage as if possessed by the beat and channelling the spirit realm.

Contextualising their music and educating their audience was key to Iniko’s onstage storytelling. They spun tales of Icarus’ origins, what it’s like to live on the margins, navigating religion as a queer person and offered an explainer on the influences of disco and rock music. “Rock and roll wouldn’t be rock and roll without black people” they say defiantly.

Touring new, previously unreleased music can be risky, but Iniko’s fans’ deafening cheers spur them on as the crowd screams out “you’re amazing” and “we love you”. They also performed more familiar singles Pinocchio and Luna, as well as covers of Earth, Wind & Fire’s Boogie Wonderland and Michael Jackson’s Earth Song. They end on their most popular single Jericho, which has the crowd pulsing and singing along, sampling Jackson’s They Don’t Care About Us in the introductory bars.

Unbound by the restrictions of genre, there was a frenetic energy across the show brought about by Iniko’s experimental approach to musical style and pace, which made it hard to keep up and switch gears as the vibe shifted. Also, a limited catalogue of singles can make it difficult to pull together a cohesive one-hour show.

By the end, like an alien creature from the cosmos, Iniko leaves a lasting impression as an artist that refuses to be boxed in.
Reviewed by Vyshnavee Wijekumar

DANCE
Wet Hard Long ★★★★
Dancehouse, until July 13

Wet Hard Long, as if you couldn’t tell from the title, is all about innuendo and suggestion. Choreographer Jenni Large has created a darkly ironic spectacle of feminine submissiveness in which two dancers also exhibit extraordinary strength, stamina and technical skill.

Wearing enormous silvery platform heels, Large and Amber McCartney glide across the glossy black studio floor on all fours. Throughout the performance, their movements have a dreamy, fluid quality – occasionally interrupted by realignments and isolations.

As they move around the stage, they appear to envelop one another in slow motion, disappearing in uncanny symmetries and mirror effects. They bend like Hans Bellmer dolls and creates surreal heaps of fishnet calves, spikes and sparkles.

There are striking images of subservience and humiliation. The two heads disappear into metal buckets. There are visual references to watersports and bondage. The removal of the gloves becomes a show of its own. And all of it is done with an absolute alien calm.

Between these suggestive tableaux, there are also glimpses of animal transformations. There’s the cat, of course, which is part of the slang of the exotic dancer; but there are other creatures, too, such as a horse lying on its back and pawing the air like something from a Tarkovsky film.

It’s these weirder moments that linger in the mind and it’s possible that Large could have given us more of this disconcerting creatureliness.

At one point, an affable looking bloke in a hoodie is plucked out of the audience and placed in a chair in the corner of the stage, like the ideal voyeur. With this, the scene achieves a kind of closure, and it all starts to seem a little less weird – a little less compelling.

And yet Wet Hard Long is still a seriously impressive show. Adelaide Harney’s lighting design suggests the morbid thrills of a horror movie and Michelle Boyde’s layered costumes make femme sexuality appear simultaneously strange and familiar.

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Anna Whitaker’s detonative sound design – full of loud collisions and hammerings – keeps the audience on edge throughout the performance so that we never completely surrender to the blank stares of the pliant dancers. In quieter moments, it recalls the work of Mica Levi.

Wet Hard Long was originally developed for the now sadly defunct Keir Choreographic Award in 2022, where it won the audience choice award. It has been extensively remodelled but is still as creepy and glamorous and exciting as it was then.

Reviewed by Andrew Fuhrmann

MUSIC
Ryman Healthcare Winter Gala: Carmina Burana ★★★★
Melbourne Symphony Orchestra, Hamer Hall, July 4

Braving a bitterly cold night, a sizeable audience attended this year’s Melbourne Symphony Orchestra winter gala. Musical warmth first came through an ebullient rendition of Richard Strauss’ Don Juan. Thrumming with the energy of the piece, chief conductor Jaime Martin vividly projected the work’s colour with engaging, well-shaped solos from guest concertmaster Glenn Christensen, oboist Michael Pisani and trumpeter Owen Morris.

Warmth of a different kind emanated from a powerful performance of Peter Sculthorpe’s Earth Cry, featuring yidaki virtuoso William Barton. Beginning in the stalls and slowly moving onstage, Barton’s instrument issued soul-piercing cries against a skilful orchestral backdrop.

Written nearly 40 years ago, this most prophetic creation is infused with a restless yearning for genuine reconciliation but acknowledges painful work is yet to be achieved. After rapturous applause, Barton performed a short work of his own evoking his native Country.

Carl Orff’s Carmina Burana rounded out the program, a work orchestra and chorus have been honing since early last year and which will tour Singapore next month.

Taking some time to establish appropriate balances and emotional energy, the work eventually took flight, with the monumental forces of the orchestra, MSO Chorus and Young Voices of Melbourne driving towards a memorable, final O fortuna.

A trio of Australian soloists rose valiantly to Orff’s vocal challenges. Bass-baritone Christopher Tonkin particularly revelled in his slapstick portrayal of the bibulous abbot of Cockaigne, while tenor Andrew Goodwin had such fine technique he almost sounded happy to be a roasted swan. Soprano Kathryn Radcliffe amiably personified the ripeness of young love.

After the concert, it may have seemed a little chillier outside had the audience been given access to the text, whose hymn to fortune ends with: “Everyone weep with me.” Fortunately, enough warmth had been generated to keep those chills at bay.
Reviewed by Tony Way

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