In a homage to the well-established Japanese garage music scene and the chance to dress up as your favourite Halloween creation, the Lansdowne has put on the inaugural Freakbeat night.

With a Halloween theme, the inhibitions were quick to disappear; and what we got was a time tunnel to the 60’s garage beat street – but scary!

Tonight’s lineup is choc o bloc full of the local garage stars, with Rosa Maria, The Jim Mitchells, Mesa Cosa (Melbourne), Los Tones and The Dandelion.

Mesa Cosa

The bad ship Mesa Cosa sailed up from Melbourne, the band regaled in their stripy sailors outfits looking like they stepped straight off a 60’s Batman set after partying with the Penguin.

They dove straight into their wild, freaky, fuzz laden sounds, with plenty of group vocals to drive the songs home through the infectious groove and wandering guitars. Check out what they have to offer here.

Predictably, towards the end of the set, the stage starts filling with more and more people to up the party atmosphere. Lots of helpers turn up for backing vocals, flinging tambourines and encouraging a small mosh to start up on the floor amongst the zombies, brides and Flintstone characters.

Intermission

Of course what’s a Freakbeat party without Go Go dancers and a trippy soundtrack? Intermissions were treated to some groovy, spooky tunes from King OPP to give the stage bookend Go Go dancers some banging tunes to shake their thangs, far into the night.

Los Tones

Launching out on stage as a troupe of 4 black pajama panted ninjas they were straight into their manic garage tunes like…….well……ninjas. The already well lubricated crowd immediately picked up on this theme and stealthily filled the front of the stage.

The raspy, hiccuppy vocals and unmistakable twangy garage sounds (listen here) got the crowd bouncing around the floor and created at first small eddies of a mosh, which then erupted into a whirlpool. Pitchforks, flat bats, severed heads and bits of limbs went flying across the floor and cotton spider webs enveloped the crowd. From here on in, it all pretty much turned into a scene from Dante’s inferno.

The frenzy picked up to the next level as more and more people hit the stage for a dance and a bit of help with percussion in what looked like what was becoming a theme for the night.

The Dandelion

Tonight we’re flying Dandelion Air! Gussied up as your favourite air crew, the Dandelion spookily just appeared on the stage. After a little fussing with equipment, they started to soothe the ghouls and marvel comic characters with their hypnotic but infectious groovy sounds.

There were lots of hippy trippy sounds, coming from their surf and mystical eastern influence, all blended together in a well used garage. Keys are a big driver of this band’s sound, steadied by Natalie de Silver’s guitar excursions and breathy vocals. It was also great to see a bit of theremin come into play through the set to add that even spookier element to the night. Check out more of their work here.

The crowd were entranced through the witchcraft weaved through the set, with a slow motion mosh pit forming and crowd surfing bodies passed from one end of the floor to the other like a train of corpses.

The last couple of songs of the night were picked up by an encore appearance of Rosa Maria, who had obviously been enjoying themselves at the bar after their early set.

They smashed out a couple of bangers with an all in stage full of performers from throughout the night – of course there was chaos, plenty of outrageous stage dancing and enough maracas being pounded to start a calypso movement. And the crowd loved it. Check em out here.

And that elusive Brown Note…..it was bit too hard to spot with all the blood soaked zombies and superheroes!