Moktar charges up the masses with electrifying set at East Perth Power Station

In some ways, Moktar is made for the Perth Festival stage—especially the East Perth Power Station. His blend of innovative, culture-infused jams feels right at home in the industrial space of the pop-up venue, itself a once-dead power station now revived. The Egyptian-Australian DJ and producer based in Melbourne, seamlessly marries club-ready techno and breakbeats with the percussive rhythms of his Arabic heritage, giving us something that is both deeply personal and universally compelling.

Playing to a jam-packed and enthusiastic crowd, Moktar’s set was a magnetic experience that drew people across generations. This was the kind of set that had people waited for the weekend to let loose. Some looked like they came straight from work, still lugging huge backpacks, too caught up in the music to care. A group of guys in their early twenties funnelled in for a boy's night, snapping group pics on a digicam. A middle-aged woman was overheard calling it a “transformative experience,” vowing to come back for another Perth Festival show. 

That’s the magic of Moktar. His unconventional approach to dance music takes you by surprise at first with its unique arrangements, but once you’re locked into his frequency, and dazzled by the hypnotic light show, he cocoons the audience in a rhythmic dome, tucked away from the rest of the world, lost in movement.

A perfect example of this is his banger of a track, North Africa. It invites you in with its absorbing distorted horns, sampled and processed into a dreamlike effect. Long before the bass even drops, the syncopated groove has already transported us into another dimension.

Moktar’s ability to fuse electronic beats with samples of traditional instrumentation makes his set feel unlike anything else. In a festival peppered with boundary-pushing artists, Moktar definitely sets the tone.