With an abundance of blue and purple lights, Sugar Mountain Festival is as much a treat for the eyes as it is for the ears. Installations from local artists adorn every corner of The Forum Theatre, with an array of luminous cotton-wool clouds, and a curiously positioned Mess & Noise stage, that seems to somehow successfully incorporate every conceivable shape and colour into a single concoction of sugary goodness. Furthermore, the most imaginably diverse collection of Australian and international bands have gathered this evening to indulge a keen Melbourne audience.
Hypnotic, electronic synths supported by apocalyptic mayhem for a rhythm section, Pets With Pets set aflame the blaze that is the spectacular Sugar Mountain. It’s an infinitely stimulating psychedelic wasteland of bizarre noises and lusciously mind-altering images. This festival’s saccharine goodness is simply irresistible.
Popping the cherry of the Mess & Noise stage, Fox + Sui are calamity of colours, weaving splintered soundscapes, glazed with glistening melodies that threaten to shake down the walls of the charmingly timeworn venue.
The Womb, tonight’s name for The Forum’s main theatre, is decorated by the vivid, kaleidoscopic projections, designed Kit Webster, that swim vibrantly across the walls. A rotating chessboard attempts to paint itself across the backs of the audience who are fervently awaiting the arrival of the next artist to feature on the stage.
John Maus is introduced by a misdirected spotlight that flies aimlessly across the stage in the hope of locking onto its target, which would also be an accurate way to describe Maus himself. With impulsive shrieks at the crowd, wild fist flailing at his own head, and the most abrupt eruptions from one song to the next, Maus is plain uncomfortable to watch. He seems to have sucked all of the energy from the motionless crowd, boisterously spitting it back at them in the form to self-abuse and general chaos. It’s a miracle that his neck can support such wild thrashings of the head. His crazed antics divert attention from his gothic-inspired vocals that haunt the manic electronic mazes, atop which they are muttered. He appeals to the voyeur that lurks within all of us, and despite our discomfort at the exploitation of his madness for entertainment (regardless of how contrived it may be), it’s impossible to turn away.
The crowd consists almost entirely of hipsters dressed to pseudo-alternative perfection in a variety of skinny jeans, deliberately clashing colours, and floral dresses that were worn too often by their original owners, but somehow carry with them the essence of the ‘90s, and therefore carry an air of artistic freedom that today’s youth have convinced themselves is lost in contemporary society, but was ever-present in the glossy reflections of the past… or maybe it just looks cool? Regardless, each member of this audience seems to have found a place of belonging amongst the other Sugar Mountain patrons. The vibe is certainly relaxed and friendly.
Absolute Boys commandeer The Summit stage, feeding the crowd with their brutal bass and offering a soothing visual respite from the marauding madness of Maus. They seem to mix accidental cocktails of splendid sounds, with delicious psychedelic guitar echoes pirouetting atop the pounding bass and percussion locomotives. It seems a crime for the crowd to be denied space on the floor to shuffle their feet, with The Summit stage situated on the ground and the seats steeply gaining altitude towards the ceiling and back wall. There’s something frustratingly abnormal about sitting at a level of elevation higher than the band. Hell, it seems plain alien to be sitting at all!
Julianna Barwick’s soul shattering, angelic hymns, flawless in their accuracy and delivery and equally as haunting in their beauty, offer such clarity of a divine vision that it’s almost blinding. To be suddenly blind, yet promised to be forever surrounded by this glorious music, there would be no remorse for what is visually lost, for what is spiritually gained from her music is more than adequate compensation. Barwick layers loops of heavenly operatic vocals that build to an explosive climax of mesmerizing splendour, in front of a backdrop of abstractly conveyed deciduous plants and naked trees. It’s marvellous.
tUnE-yArDs’ “first show in Australia ever!” starts with an awkward “hello”, then a sudden eruption into yodeling. Like Barwick, Merrill Garbus stands alone on stage, accumulating layer after layer of vocals. However, unlike Barwick, she doesn’t continue simply to construct exquisite noises on top of each other; instead, Garbus breaks the loops and structures proper songs. Gradually, the backing band emerges onto stage and joins her for a set of unconventional melodies and stimulating hip-hop/folk beats. With a versatile voice that sounds like the growl of an angered lioness, tUnE-yArDs offers a truly unique live experience, with an inimitable experimental mix of sounds that cultivates a strangely cohesive and appealing musical encounter.
Meanwhile, a large white canvas sits vacant below a series of rotating metal rigs on stage in The Summit. From these rigs, artist Ben Barretto hangs a large sheet of turquoise crushed velvet, a small blank canvas and a tangled mess of brightly coloured plastic tubing. Barretto progressively adds paint to the objects and, through the perpetual rotation and languid dripping of paint; a work of art is born. Accompanied by Sun Araw’s experimental electronic jungles, featuring guitar, saxophone and bass all fed through bizarre effects, this is the most trippy set of the evening.
The Womb finally welcomes Californian garage band, Thee Oh Sees. Lead singer/guitarist, John Dwyer, holds his guitar like a gun and uses it with such force that it probably could tear holes in you. With two drumkits, a keyboardist in the middle and the guitarist and bassist at equal distances on either side, the band has an oddly picturesque balance to it. Naturally, their set consists mostly of high-energy, guitar driven garage rock with surf-punk undertones. They’re a welcome deviation from the past few hours of challenging experimental music. Their simple structures and clap-along beats are oddly comforting, despite their explosive energy.
Headliners, Deerhoof soon hit The Womb. Notoriously animated in their live performances, their disjointed brand of experimental pop-rock, backed by projections of various creepy-crawlies, is impossible to ignore. Furthermore, they’re too loud. Even in the very back row, with high-quality earplugs, it’s difficult to escape the desire to run from the room in an effort to preserve the ability to hear. However, Deerhoof is simply too delicious to resist. From guitarist Ed Rodriguez’s fatally skilled fingers to singer Satomi Matsuzaki’s deceptively sweet voice, the band is nothing but magnificent. The quartet exudes so much electricity in their performance that it’s questionable whether they even need an external power source for their instruments.
The magical night finally draws to an end, with Shabazz Palaces closing the show, with their robotic/tribal raps providing the perfect soundtrack to some on-stage synchronized dancing.
Sugar Mountain Festival has provided the perfect opportunity for Melbourne’s lovers of eccentric music and eclectic art to converge and occupy a Saturday night in the most gratifying of ways imaginable. We’re already eager to return next year.
– Lara Moates
