Robin Fox. Though the name conjures Roald Dahl or Enid Blyton tales, the man himself looks like the offspring of J Mascis from Dinosaur Jr., and Hagrid, the grumpy heart-of-gold giant of Harry Potter fame.

.Fox is our host for this evening, and one of the two founders of MESS (Melbourne Electronic Sound Studio), the other being Byron J Scullin (also a delightfully literary kind of name). Bushy grey beard aside, Fox conveys a childlike enthusiasm about the collection of electronic instruments he and Scullin assembled in preparation for MESS’s opening in 2016 .

As part of its commitment to celebrating the collection and ensuring the synthesisers get played, MESS has been hosting the Sonorous series since 2019.

The performance to which we are treated follows that established in earlier incarnations. We hear from one commissioned artist, then there is an interval, followed by a presentation of “something from the MESS archives”, and finally, the second commissioned artist.

The difference this time is that all of these have been presented at the Substation, a former industrial building, now an arts venue in Melbourne’s inner west. This Sonorous performance (the ninth in the series) moves to the Primose Potter Salon, a beautiful and acoustically...