Yours & Owls Launch at Molo Live

Molo Live at ANU Pop-Up have recently made a deal with Wollongong’s Your’s & Owl’s to manage their music bookings and boy what a treat for Canberra this is! To give you a quick brief as to who Your’s & Owl’s are – they book the music for UoW (university of Wollongong) and also have their own self titled music festival bringing in artists such as; SAFIA, The Presets, Dune Rats, City Calm Down & many more acclaimed musicians.

The deal itself gives Canberra an opportunity to grow the local music community and give the Capital city a larger voice in the music industry.

Walking into Molo Live you could feel the anticipation of how the night is going to pan out. Launches for any type of creative project can be nerve racking from the both organising team and audience. With a spacious bar filled with fairy lights above your head and a place to set down and enjoy a beer on tap, it was easy to wind down prior entering the stage area.

Genesis Owusu’s (Kofi Ansah) is not a stranger to the Canberra hip-hop music scene, the excitement in the crowd as the lights dropped was clear as day. With a fantastic lyrical opening song – Genesis had the audience wrapped around his little finger. The highlight of his set was of course the high energetic performances of the songs ‘Void’ and ‘CBR Zoo’. Each one of these songs had the crowd bouncing around in unison.

Followed by Genesis was his older brother Citizen Kay (and the other half of their collaborating hip-hop act ‘The Ansah Brothers‘). Citizen Kay puts a new definition on what it means to give an energetic performance. I honestly can’t believe how he has so much stamina, you can feel his vibrance bouncing from wall to wall as he performs and dances to his playful yet serious lyrics. Citizen is a very well known bright character in the Australian hip-hop scene who hasn’t been performing as much as we would like him to!

Newcastle duo Gooch Palms presented a change from hip-hop to old school messy punk with a touch of tightened harmonies to their music. The audience was jumping and a huge expected sing along to their song “Ask Me Why?”. A highlight of the performance was definitely when I member of one the boys from Genesis Owusu’s performance was handed over the lead singers guitar in the crowd.

Photo by CBR DIY

Closing the night was Sydney duo headliner Polish Club who presented a vintage rock ‘n’ roll style set to finish off the night. The duo’s obvious chemistry and modest performance left a very friendly feeling in the audience at Molo Live.

Despite the lack of student presence at the launch, which was unfortunate (probably due to exam crunch time). I have high hopes that the announcement of Yours & Owls settling into the ACT to do the bookings for Molo Live is a positive step towards building the music scene in Canberra!