Trust is magnetic. Robert Alfons, the man behind the Canadian technopop band, stands before us like an alien: blurred by the smoke and intense stage lights, he’s just a strange, lean figure making unfamiliar noises. And it’s insane. The audience is awake with a hungry excitement and flashing lights almost completely obscure the stage, leaving the outline of what starts to seem like a god.
Seriously invested in a noise that is equally surreal, nostalgic and hypnotizing, Trust knows how to captivate an audience. We all sunk into the music, holding our hair off of our sweaty faces and swinging our bodies around within the black box of The Frequency.
The night began (finally, at 10 PM) with Mozart’s Sister, a much more decipherable form of synthpop in comparison to Trust. Caila Thompson-Hannat came to the stage in a greasy polo shirt, her messy blond hair hanging in her face. She rocked out to her EP Hello — a real journey back to ’80s techno — while poking at her electronic mixer with the careful curiosity of a toddler.
Mozart’s Sister was good beyond anything I had expected. With a visible thrill for the music that she had to give, Thompson-Hannat set a strong precedent for the evening. But Trust’s performance was unimaginably mind-blowing. Based mostly on music from their new album, Joyland, the songs mostly tend to stick to a certain spiritual mold. Intentionally mysterious, vague, and dreamlike, the noises bouncing around The Frequency on Saturday night occupied the audience.
The man on stage looked like a cardboard cut-out. The sounds felt like they were falling from the ceiling. It reminded me of Club Silencio from Mulholland Drive: cinematic, foreign, and almost frightening. Trust provokes a feeling of vague discomfort that makes the music more than just music: but the background of a truly dramatic, intense experience.