Live Review: TZU, Sietta

When we arrive, Sietta vocalist Caiti Baker is giving it some booty, Big Freedia-style, up on stage. Her voice is a formidable force, and the music is an eclectic mix of electronica, soul and hip hop. Ex-TZU bass player James Mangohig operates the musical side of things with a bass guitar and a laptop, but it would be great to hear Baker's voice with a full band. What Am I Supposed To Do stands out with its bowel-trembling bass, while their cover of Marcy Playground's Sex And Candy, coming straight out of leftfield, showcases Baker's phenomenal voice.

No one beats TZU for unbridled joy and enthusiasm. There are massive grins all round from all four members of the band, and MC Joelistics (Joel Ma) in particular looks positively thrilled to be here as he leaps around the Hi-Fi stage. This is the TZU we know and love. The middle section of the gig, when they play a few tracks from their 2004 debut record Position Correction, is definitely the most fun. Countbounce (Pip Norman) ditches his bass for a mic and joins Joelistics for renditions of Dam Busters, Back Up! and Summer Days.

The material from their new album, Millions Of Moments, however, does not lend itself to happily leaping about. The band members have admitted there's a dark, kosmische band lurking inside them, and the new material definitely showcases those tendencies. They kick off with the opening track from the album Beginning Of The End, which features huge, brooding, church-organ synths, which they perform, appropriately, in the dark. It's not that the old stuff is better than the new stuff, although the crowd certainly – outwardly at least – seems to enjoy the old stuff more. But Position Correction is about as far, sonically, from Millions Of Moments as it possibly could be, which tends to put a glitch in the flow of the gig. They perform all slow, echoey, synthy seven minutes of The Window, the last track on Millions Of Moments, for the first time ever, and Norman thanks the crowd for indulging the band's nerd-out to synth weirdness. The material from Computer Love bridges the gap between mature synth nerdiness and youthful, joyous hip hop, and it's the tracks from that album, such as Step To The Pressure and Computer Love, that both the crowd and the band seem to really enjoy, equally.