The colourful mouth of the Sugar Mountain main stage. Photograph by Andrew Bibby.
As Europe bunkers down beneath its snowy blanket, we Down Under are being blessed with generous sprinklings of music-festival delights – and it’s difficult to find much sweeter than SUGAR MOUNTAIN, a cultural extravaganza that’s been drawing drooling audiences the country over for five delicious years.
The 2015 instalment was bigger and flashier, gorged on a string of previous successes. A new location was found in the Victorian College of the Arts, in the centre of the Southbank precinct which boasts a nestle against the riverside, the National Gallery of Victoria and oodles of green parks all around. A recurring issue that bothers festivals in the south of the country is the unpredictability of the weather patterns (as we saw at Hobart’s MONA FOMA), but the skies were at their gleaming best on this occasion, dripping gold over the tips of the 5000-strong crowd.
A wonderfully colourful and weird festival
Priding itself in its unique combination of both visual and audial art, the festival was a colourful and fantastical labyrinth of streamers and blow-ups; the artist installations themselves were a little more low-key, tucked into quiet nooks and passing under the radars of many more boisterous punters. The only major drawback, however, was found outside of the music and art offerings entirely; it was in the under-capacity food and drink stalls, which had punters lining up for long periods. For those of the vegetarian persuasion there wasn’t a lot to be had but various cuts of the ol’ fried potato. In any case, the banquet of musical delicacies on offer more than made up for it.
The mighty King Gizzard cutting loose. Photograph by Brian Purnell.
With most sets capping at a fleeting forty minutes, the selection was like plunging wrists into buckets at a candy store; brief explosions of taste whose merit was decided swiftly. Locals KING GIZZARD AND THE LIZARD WIZARD opened the day to a crowd of dedicated early-comers, proving once more over why they’re one of the most exciting acts in the country. With two drummers pummelling out palpitations in unison and harmonica twangs melting over the surface of it all, the Gizz burst and bubbled over like sherbet bombs. Hovering between epileptic smash-numbers (Cellophane, that’s you) and woozy, drawn-out jams (like the magnificent Head On/Pill), they left hazy ripples in their wake much like those emanating from the sun-pounded asphalt.
ICEAGE were a curious follow-up appearance on the outdoor stage. Clad as heavily as their brooding output, vocalist Elias Bender Rønnenfelt looked almost translucent under the UV rays, a teenage-swoon vampire exorcising demons from his chest through cries and twisted gyrations. While perhaps better suited to the sultriness of the indoor theatre, their set was riddled with an impressive darkness and urgency that lingered.
Bass contortions from the fabulous Bo Ningen. Photograph by Gil Gilmour.
Seizing the show with clenched and triumphant fists, however, were Japan-via-London guitar monsters BO NINGEN. Blowing every punter in sight clean out of the water, they stormed back and forth across the stage in an almost indescribably frenzy; an absurdly concocted conglomeration of metal, psych and pure freak-out that had mops of hair flying in every direction. As the final track descended into frenetic, just-held-together chaos, vocalist and bassist Taigen Kawabe ran for the barriers, playing against the crowd while his face contorted and hisses escaped his lips in an extended jam.
Not long after, local pop darlings TWERPS swooned out a smooth, though perhaps slightly lacklustre set; He’s In Stock was a welcome up-tempo highlight. After a dance extravaganza from the NO ZU troupe, it was time for headliner ARIEL PINK to take the reins. The crowd packed in like a sea of boiled sweets and, with PINK and his bandmates onstage, the anticipation raised to a feverish pitch. A consistent disagreement between musician and sound engineer saw almost a quarter of his set sadly shaved off; what we did get, however, was a blissful treat. The glistening soap-bubble of a performance was laden with a string of gems from the fabulous Pom Pom, including One Summer Night and creepy boogie-inducer Black Ballerina, leaving the crowd starry-eyed and smitten.
The ever-engimatic Ariel Pink. Photograph by Chip Mooney.
As expected, SWANS launched into a heavy bone-thud of a sprawl that leaked well beyond the festival site and into surrounding streets, the vaguely sun-addled gathering of audience beginning to see mirages as the bass refused to wilt. Over in the Theatre, others were dragging themselves behind curtains and into a dimly lit auditorium to watch beloved oddball KIRIN J CALLINAN unveil a new show. Titled Terrible Love, it was a star-studded and technologically-frazzled Skype singalong with a number of special friends including JACK LADDER, Australian icon NEIL FINN, BLOOD ORANGE and finally MAC DEMARCO. The gap-toothed favourite was kind (and likely inebriated) enough to grant us a close-up shot of his balls, but was sadly cut off before any collaboration was squeezed from the pair due to ailing time constraints.
The overall effect was one of lasting confusion; surety as to which parts of the set were deliberate, which were accident and which were disaster was impossible to attain. Emerging from the theatre into a twinkling and bass-thudded darkness, it was the perfectly strange ending to a wonderfully colourful and weird festival – one that continues to grow, morph and surprise.
Punters file into the fray. Photograph by Chip Mooney.
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