With an over-abundance of Australian music festivals over the summer period, there really isn’t another festival remotely similar to Sugar Mountain.
Dubbed the “summer music festival for people who don’t like summer music festivals,” the entire night is held within The Forum, with an array of alternative, electronic music on display, as well as audiovisual performances.
Entering the iconic venue is like entering a new, vivid, and at times overwhelming world for one glorious night, with projections covering the walls, an artificial ‘sky’ roof, and towering, ancient statues.
Locals Lower Plenty opened the evening with an endearingly rough-around-the-edges set of chilled-out, super-Australian pop songs. ‘Nullarbor’ showcased the clever songwriting of the four-piece, while three members switched vocal duties across the set.
Fitting three stages within The Forum is an impressive feat, with the upstairs cinema being utilised brilliantly, while the upstairs bar and balcony was transformed into a make-shift DJ area.
Phantoscopia began proceedings on the cinema’s The Summit stage, and showed exactly how the area would be used for that night. It was a bewildering, bizarre, and entertaining brand of performance art involving hooded members of Midnight Juggernauts, a series of short films, and a live soundtrack.
Downstairs at the main stage, the talented Boomgates delivered a polished set of upbeat pop numbers with an edge, aptly matched by a serene backdrop of Hanging Rock.
Tracks such as ‘Layman’s Terms’ display the band’s ability to write simple and enjoyable music, assisted by wonderfully complementing vocals between the emotive Brendan Huntley and Steph Hughes.
Given that the upstairs stage is traditionally a cinema, it provided the perfected setting for Naysayer and Gilsun to display their audiovisual extravaganza. The high-rising seats allowed everyone to fully observe the intricacies and talent that goes into producing the layered sounds; accompanied by a staggering amount of samples and movie clips.
With an overflowing crowd, the duo wonderfully summed up what Sugar Mountain is all about: a seamless and wonderfully weird combination of music, performance, visual stimulus, and everything in between.
American alt-folkies Woods proved to be an early standout, delivering an atmospheric, dreamy set that was complemented by minimalistic videos in the backdrop. Jeremy Earl’s soaring vocals shined over the dense layers of sound that were carefully developed, before finally breaking out into infectiously catchy songs.
The harmonica-led ‘Cali In A Cup’ encapsulated the band’s unique sound, while the set as a whole merged together into a seamless whole.
The makeshift third stage was far from ideal for electronic duo Collarbones, with most of the impressively large audience unable to catch a glimpse of the two working their magic due to the lack of a raised stage. Despite this, the pair put on an energetic set that concluded with a full-blown and glorious cover of ‘Jenny From The Block’.
Meanwhile, Kirin J Callinan was courting controversy upstairs. Collaborating with director Kris Moyes (the pair have also produced a brilliant film clip together), the original, intended performance apparently involved deliberately inducing a seizure in a planted member of the audience with photosensitive epilepsy, a move vetoed (for obvious reasons) by festival organisers.
With this quickly becoming the talk of the festival, it left one more than a little suspicious that this may have been the plan all along for the performance, and it’s hard to argue it wasn’t successful with the buzz it had already generated.
Bringing their odd blend of punk and bubblegum genres to the main stage, Hunx And His Punx played to a small but loyal crowd. Frontman Seth Bogart wasted no time in asking if everyone was ‘horny’, before attempting to dry-hump a photographer, and slowly removing items of clothing. Although deliberately over-the-top, the antics detracted from what were simplistic and enjoyable songs.
Simply put, iconic 80s group ESG’s return to Melbourne was a joyous celebration of music. With the standing room finally packed, the bass-heavy, soulful group were impossible to resist, and brought about a dancing frenzy.
The hugely influential and often-sampled Scroggins sisters stated “we’ve come a long way Australia, let me know you’re out there;” and in the massive call and response of ‘You Make No Sense’, they certainly did.
With nearly every member sporting a newly acquired Triple R shirt, they seemed genuinely overjoyed to be there, and this instantly spread throughout the adoring masses. The all-too short set culminated with a stage invasion of sorts, with those side-of-stage streaming on and gleefully dancing, leaving everyone with a smile.
With few options for stages and band placements, it was inevitable that an act would be placed somewhere they didn’t belong. Unfortunately for HTRK, The Summit wasn’t suited to their minimal electronic sound, featuring spoken word and some haunting vocals.
The duo created brooding, dark music, but with a fully seated audience, minimal visual accompaniment, and a large and empty stage, it just wasn’t the right atmosphere for them.
Not to be outdone in terms of controversy, chef-come-rapper Action Bronson completely disregarded the stage and wandered throughout the standing area, and at one point appeared to be involved in an altercation with a security guard (which resulted in a police riot van being stationed outside the theatre).
Bronson meandered through the crowd while effortlessly free-styling, even ‘serenading’ a bar worker and receiving a drink in return. After finally asking “which way is the stage?”, he continually demanded the backing track be turned off, before abruptly leaving the stage after only 25 minutes.
Action Bronson was definitely out of place amongst the arty, delicate surroundings of The Forum, himself admitting that it was “a weird show,” but he still managed to put on an entertaining and no-doubt eye grabbing performance, best summed up by his closing line of “I love you, go fuck yourselves, have a good night”.
Wildly creative Brooklyn six-piece Dirty Projectors headlined the night, and displayed an inventive and awe-inspiring set of their eccentrically trademark songs.
Frontman David Longstreth confidently strode onto stage, uttered a brief “hello,” and launched into the title track off 2012’s Swing Lo Magellan. It’s probably the simplest song that Longstreth has ever written, but it works well as an introduction for the band, showcasing both his and Amber Coffman’s fantastic voices.
‘Offspring Are Blank’ slowly built to its explosive conclusion, while ‘The Socialites’ allowed Coffman’s vocals to take the lead.
Dirty Projectors’ music is undoubtedly complex and intriguing on record, but it’s something else entirely to see it being created live, right in front of your eyes; the complex harmonies, the eclectic drumming, the intricate, dueling guitars.
By the time most had gotten their heads around the bewildering beat of ‘About To Die’, the song was over, while ‘Beautiful Mother’ saw all three female members creating simply incredibly harmonies.
Longstreth seemed utterly cheerful and bounded around the stage, while somehow producing the complicated guitar lines, as seen on ‘Just From Chevron’, at the same time.
After departing for a short and thoroughly unnecessary encore, the band reappeared and began the instantly recognizable Bitte Orca standout ‘Stillness Is The Move’, before concluding with ‘Impregnable Question’.
After playing for only an hour of the allotted 90 minute set, it was obvious that they weren’t returning, leaving the sizable crowd perplexed and unfortunately ending the festival on a somewhat sour note, although nothing can take away from the band’s wonderfully impressive performance.
As the constant stream of people stumbled back outside into the real world, it’s obvious that most are already counting down the days until they can once again enter the weird and wonderful world of Sugar Mountain Festival.
