The surprise late entry of Harvest Festival last year into an already crowded Australian festival market was greeted with at first with scepticism, but after announcing a stellar lineup including Portishead and The Flaming Lips, Harvest cemented itself on the festival calendar.
Not that the first year was without teething problems. While fans in Sydney and Brisbane had a relatively incident free event, the Melbourne leg of the festival was wrought with understaffing, stock problems with food and beverage operators, and long lines to toilets and the bar that exceeded an hour at some points of the day.
Still, with a top notch lineup and a venue that was easily one of the most beautiful and picturesque of any Australian festival, Harvest will no doubt be given the benefit of the doubt when it returns in November this year.
There has been much discussion as to whether the festival would return, it’s long been rumoured that in fact this year was supposed to be Harvest’s debut but promoters Soundwave Touring pushed it forward a year when Portishead said they’d be available in 2011.
Soundwave Touring have now confirmed that the festival will be back in Melbourne, Sydney, and Brisbane, after they posted on Facebook a message looking for applications for arts submissions, an important but often overlooked part of the Harvest programme.
“Harvest Festival 2012, taking place from 10th-18th November in Melbourne, Sydney and Brisbane, has opened the application process for arts submissions,” wrote promoters yesterday.
“Over 400 artists participated in the 2011 Harvest arts programme across the three cities, over four dedicated stages, 50 installations, and 2 virtual experiences. This year, the arts programming team are seeking stage performance, live art happenings, site installations, roaming performance, spoken word, comedy, circus, digital and ecological arts projects – and everything in between.”
“In its debut year, Harvest scooped up Best Major Festival in the FBi Sydney Music and Arts Awards, was named Best Touring Festival by AU Review, and was voted Number 2 Best Australian Festival of 2011 in the Street Press Australia national survey.”
Rumours on who could be on the lineup have already started, with Icelandic ethereal group Sigur Ros tipped as one of the headliners. During an interview with Drowned in Sound via FasterLouder, frontman Jonsi revealed that the band “we’re off to Australia” later on this year, and although a timeline hasn’t been established it seems unlikely to be a coincidence.
Another name that promoters have allegedly been courting is Irish alternative rock group My Bloody Valentine, who despite only releasing two albums made a huge mark on the burgeoning shoegaze scene.
Artists interested in contributing to Harvest 2012 can apply via the online application form. The deadline for all arts submissions is July 1, 2012.
To obtain the application form, head tohttp://bit.ly/HARV12subs
