Live music review: Bonobo, Vicar Street, Dublin

As ‘Bonobo’, DJ, producer and soundtrack composer Simon Green has spent his career exploring the esoteric hinterlands of electronic music. From arms-in-the-air mayhem to ambient collages, the self-effacing Englishman embraces a multitude of identities and there were moments during his sold out Vicar Street concert when he seemed to be working through a very mild crisis of identity.

Was he here to blast away the cobwebs with repackaged rave beats? Or was his true calling as conjurer of balmy 21st century trip-hop? The answer was never clear and it made for an intriguing muddle. Cuts from this year’s Migrations LP featured sax player, guitarist and boisterous rhythm section, with guest vocalist Szjerdene Mulcare evoking the glad-to-be-glum spirit of Massive Attack and Portishead on ‘7th Sevens’ and ‘Break Apart’.

Such interludes were heady and atmospheric. With tribal drumming and sampled pipes there was, admittedly, a danger of sliding into the ghastly faux-genre of ‘world music’ . Yet it was a respectful appropriation — Green may be a magpie but he is an astute and considered one.

Still, it was significant that the room responded far more enthusiastically to the briskly hedonistic ‘We Could Forever’ and ‘Kong’ from his 2010 album Black Sands. Into the wings shuffled the band, up went the bpm rate and a previously quietly attentive crowd was suddenly moving en masse.

It was the tempo shift for which the night had cried out. Bonobo’s delving into globe trotting jazz-funk were a chin scratcher’s delight. This, however, was a far more potent cocktail. With the air of a mildly befuddled doctorate student, Green is unlikely to be mistaken for Calvin Harris — yet these mid-concert thumpers would not have felt out of place at an Ibiza club night.

A frequent criticism of electronic musicians is that they lack stage presence. Green’s solution was an arresting video show. It provided the finishing touch to a multifaceted evening in which performer and audience were joined together in eclectic dreams.