While Sydney celebrates it’s last weekend without Barry’s 1:30AM lockout, Melbourne will be hosting White Night, a citywide festival held throughout Saturday (22nd Feb) night. Like, I mean, throughout the whole night – there are bands starting at like 5am. As with any city funded free festival, there’s gonna be a lot of art installations, light shows, talks, comedy, theatre and the horror that is burlesque (when, oh when will burlesque die?), but also some absolute gems you might not know are on. Here’s Happy’s guide to White Night 2014:
BEACHES – 8:10pm – Northern Lights Stage
Beaches are a band who play their pedals as much as their guitars. Swirling modulation and reverb for days, the all girl five piece released one of Australian psychedelia’s favourite LP’s late last year. She Beats mixes a love for cool sounding guitars with influences from krautrock and garage – a mix of pretty ladies and cool sounds is a surefire way to keep you dancing all night.
THE TELEVISION SKY – 7:00pm – Alex & The Engineer / Queen Victoria Gardens
The Television Sky are a post-rock band who make expansive, cinematic tunes for the whole world to hear. Fiddly guitars, beautiful guitar/piano interplay and snare heavy drumbeats make The Television Sky the city’s premiere purveyors of music to watch clouds to. A more airborne Yndi Halda, or a more terrestrial Explosions In The Sky, make sure not to miss The Television Sky, hopefully amidst a picture-perfect Victoria sunset.
GROOVES ON THE GREEN – 7:00pm – Northern Lights / RMIT Gallery
This one is less of a musical performance and rather more like a musical installation / TED talk. RMIT’s MECO students have put together an ‘exploration of contemporary dance music and it’s associated cultures and technologies’. If you have any interest in electronic music production, sound synthesis or modern rave cultures, this is definitely worth checking out. Alongside the exhibition will be performances from some of Melbourne’s top electronic producers – check the website for a full list of performers/lecturers.
THE MURLOCS – 3:40AM – Northern Lights Stage
The Murlocs make spaghetti-western guitar music with bright twin reverbs, frequent harmonica breakdowns and a vocalist whose wail sounds straight out of a time machine back to the swinging sixties. Some might consider The Murlocs a poor man’s King Gizzard and the Lizard Wizard, but The Murlocs won’t make you sit through a 16 minute song, nor will their album be exclusively spoken word stories about Yavapai Native Americans. How considerate of them.
CLIENT LIAISON – 7:00pm – Northern Lights Stage
Client Liaison have been turning heads all over the country with their unique take on dolewave culture, infusing disco and electronica into the recent resurgence in Australiana. It’s hard to make a synthesiser sound like a gum tree or evoke memories of Ansett Air, yet Client Liaison manage to do it. Are the 80’s coming back into fashion? Let’s bloody hope this is a one off…
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