Vaporwave Pop Up Shop at the Quadraphonic Club
5 April 2025 in Melbourne, featuring doktorb, Wet Electronics, Daydream Deluxe, Dark5lalom, Killawarra, Mada Yana (まだヤナ), JR / KS and Post Dive.
A feature of the past few weeks at our place has been Adrian, also known as doktorb, rehearsing for this show. It was the brainchild of Benjamin Chesler who hosts Always Open, the fortnightly late-night vaporwave show on PBS.
This was a bit of a first. Vaporwave is an internet music microgenre and there haven't been any live shows of this scale in Australia before now. It meant that the crowd was largely comprised of friends of the acts, but with such a long line-up that added up to a respectable turnout.
Brunswick's Quadraphonic Club is a big venue, however. The building is the former Pontian Club and it retains much of its mid-century community club aesthetic complete with parquetry dance floor and impressively ruffled curtains. Groups of people were sparsely scattered around the loud carpet and cane furniture in a manner not incompatible with the forgotten shopping mall affect beloved of the vaporwave crowd.
I enjoyed all of the acts but I would pick out Wet Electronics as my favourite (not including doktorb, of course). The visuals, produced by b l u e s c r e e n (who unfortunately had to pull out of performing at the last minute), were outstanding. The sound was really good, too.
Half way through Wet Electronics' set who should turn up but Mike, fresh from performing his Comedy Festival show Science Friction (it's good! Go see it!) and two (2) Matts. That was a lovely surprise and awfully good of them.
Adrian's set I knew was going to be good but it was even better than I expected. Yes, I know, of course I'm going to say that. But it was, I swear.
