The second night of Adelaide’s Unsound Festival drew a large crowd to the Hindley Street Music Hall with most arriving as soon as the doors opened early in the evening.

The lineup was certainly eclectic and potentially interesting but, ultimately, the music was a little disappointing overall.

First to hit the stage was German electronic composer Wolfgang Voigt, performing under the name GAS.

For over an hour Voigt stood silhouetted at his computer as he played one single piece of music whilst an abstract film of dissembling and disintegrating images and words was projected on a slow loop behind him.

The effect of this synthesis of sight and sound was akin to being caught in a slow motion whirlpool of discomfort, waiting with little hope for some hint of variation to pull you out of the inevitable disappointment you sensed was coming.

English experimentalists, Moin, were next to the stage. They were billed as a trio but arrived as a four piece and their set was built around compositions reliant on simplistic riff repetitions coupled with snatches of recorded dialogue playing over the top. This approach became a little monotonous as the set progressed with the sampled snatches of speech often delivered by the same voice repeating uninteresting mundanities.

At times Moin sounded a little like an early version of the Gang Of Four collaborating with Laurie Anderson, a combination which should have made their performance more engaging than it was.

John Cale had not played a gig in Adelaide for nearly forty years before this one and on his previous visits to town he had played strictly solo sets, so seeing the stage being set up for a full band was cause for considerable excitement.

The man is now 83 years old so, realistically, expectations had to be tempered yet, after following this musical icon’s career for much of his seven decades as an innovator and vanguard of musical change, it was no surprise to see him attempt to deliver a rockier set of tunes this time around.

The gap, however, between intent and what was ultimately delivered was considerable as Cale, at times, found it hard to play at the pace he set for his own band.

The setlist did include a few well-received early career touchstones such as Mr. Wilson (his homage to the recently deceased Beach Boys main-man), The Ballad Of Cable Hogue, and his much loved version of Elvis’s hit, Heartbreak Hotel, which, when he first covered it years ago was an unsettling, threatening reinterpretation of the original, but in this performance was now a frail unsettling study of desperation and despair.

He also covered Frozen Warnings, a song from Nico’s second album, The Marble Index, that he produced for her in 1968 which was an interesting and surprising inclusion.

Songs from his more recent releases were also prevalent with How We See The Light and Company Commander, both from last year’s Poptical Illusion album, being the standouts.

The fourteen song set finished with a grinding swing through his 1974 classic, Barracuda, which started well enough but Cale seemed frustrated as he struggled to get through to the end of the song as his keyboard work became increasingly discordant and off the beat.

After a lengthy pause, the band came back on stage to play an encore but Cale, once he had resumed his seat at his keyboard, strangely apologised to us all for his effort in ‘Hallelujah, or whatever it was’ (a song he did not actually play) before leaving the stage once again, without playing a note, his band looking confused and sheepish as they unplugged and, anticlimactically, followed him offstage and into the wings.

It was a disappointing end to the night but, much more concerningly, it was a possible sign that this legend of contemporary music may not be able to maintain the rage for much longer as a stage performer.

If this is to be the case, how lucky we are to have had him play again for us in Adelaide, but how sad it is that this singular talent’s presence may now be missing from the world’s stage.

Unsound Festival 2025: John Cale, Moin & GAS, at the Hindley Street Music Hall, Saturday 12 July 2025.