Project Description

ALLDAY

+ Toby&Pete

@ Adelaide Unibar

13/06/2017 (Live Review)

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Allday

Photo – Littlek Photography

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Tom Gaynor, more commonly known as Allday, returned to his hometown of Adelaide for his only South Australian show of 2017 on Tuesday night for a mashup of music and visual art with fellow home-grown creatives, Toby&Pete.

The Adelaide-raised rapper took over Adelaide UniBar with guests, Gill Bates and Mikey Hunj for the free art performance-turned-biggest-Tuesday-night-party I’ve attended in a long time.

Toby&Pete, who’s work you’ve probably seen with artists like Flume, Chet Faker and Safia, combined photography, music and visual art to create a live art show featuring distorted images of the artists and the crowd, synced to the music performance. The end result – a collage that illustrated the inclusivity of live music, showing the faces of each fan that participated in the free show.

The opening acts, Gill Bates and Mikey Hunj did a pretty great job of hyping up a crowd of broke uni students on a Tuesday night during SWOTVAC (aka when they definitely should’ve been studying). I don’t really know what more to say about a couple of DJs but let’s just say they stepped it up a notch from the usual beats you’re hearing on a Saturday night at your favourite nightclub! With free drinks, courtesy of ROAM, everyone was well and truly in the mood to part before Allday even took the stage.

I have to be honest, after seeing a long-haired Aussie bloke wearing his t-shirt over his jumper walk out on stage eating a handful of grapes and a slice of watermelon, my expectations were pretty low. “Another self-proclaimed Aussie rapper with an ego bigger than his actual fan base,” I thought to myself as Allday took the stage. (Spoiler alert – this guy actually has a huge fan base, as evident in the hysteria that took place when he entered the room.)

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Allday

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He began the set with Got It from his 2014 album, Startup Cult, which immediately sent the crowd crazy.  At 10pm on a Tuesday night, I was standing in a crowded bar, sober, listening to a guy with bangs rap, so the audience excitement gave me hope that Allday couldn’t be that bad.  But everything changed after he finished his grapes.

Allday followed up by thrashing some of his best tracks, including Grammy, Raceway and Cult before throwing in an epic cover of Childish Gambino’s 3005. Far from being considered an Allday fan, I was pleasantly surprised with how many good songs I actually knew the words to.

If the sight of the Adelaide-local-turned-international-rap-sensation wasn’t enough to keep your eyes interested, you could kill time spotting your face in Toby&Pete’s innovative digital collage. For someone who walked in with low expectations, I was pleasantly surprised when I was struggling to focus on all of the amazing visual art and musical talent taking place simultaneously around me.

The set was rapped (mind the pun) up with a series of hits including the groovy track, You Always Know The DJ, concluding with the killer tune that’s currently thrashing our radios, In Motion.

Whether you’re a fan of rap or not, Allday and Toby&Pete’sa fusion of live music & art’ performance was a night to be remembered. While I entered Unibar with pretty low expectations, I can assure you that this performance was well worth attending, especially when it cost nothing! After a performance like that, even I downloaded a couple of his tracks to my Spotify playlist! The end result – still not a converted rap fan, but I can definitely appreciate Allday’s talent and dedication to his work.

If you’re located anywhere other than Adelaide (unfortunately), you can catch Allday at a variety of shows and festivals throughout the remainder of 2017, more information including tour dates can be found at www.alldaytunes.com.

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AMNPLIFY – DB