Melbourne’s Royal Exhibition Building, with its famed 68-metre-high dome modelled on the Florence Cathedral, is one of only two buildings in Australia designated as World Heritage Sites by UNESCO (the other is the Sydney Opera House). Ordinarily booked out for garden shows, community events and, for a time, as a COVID-19 vaccination facility, it has been over 20 years since major contemporary music – a concert by Moby in 2003 – has been performed here.
Over the past week Now or Never, Naarm’s newest major festival, made its staggering debut within the building’s ornate walls. Its first night began with Orchestra Victoria’s rendition of ‘Music for 18 Musicians’, a work by the seminal minimalist American composer, Steve Reich. Based on a cycle of 11 chords, around each of which a small piece of music is constructed, Reich’s work was a breakthrough in the minimalist movement of the ’70s.
While restrained in its set of parameters, Reich’s composition is lush, hypnotic and engrossing. It washes over you in waves – a metaphor literalised by the night’s visual artist Jesse Woolston, whose digital waterfall of colour flowed down the festival’s towering 16m-high semi-transparent LED screen in the building’s eastern wing. Orchestra Victoria and Woolston’s spectacle was an utterly transfixing opening for the festival.
Inspired by the now-closed London superclub Printworks, the screen and room’s dimensions were perfectly suited to capturing images for social media, and although people used their cameras freely, the crowds seemed to live in the moment too. Stage lights running up and down the screen’s supporting scaffolding were visible through the projection surface, enabling a dizzying three-dimensionality to each act’s visual presentation.
Less successful on NME’s visits over August 25-27 was the festival’s “Neversphere” – a geodesic steel dome structure presenting 360-degree films scored by acclaimed artists including Italian synthesist Caterina Barbierri and modern-classical composer Ólafur Arnalds. During the screenings NME attended the humming of generators overwhelmed the films’ quietest passages, and the projectors’ brightness wasn’t up to the task of presenting the detail in the mountain ranges depicted in Barbieri and Ruben Spini’s Aurora Wounds. Better was Arnalds and Torsten Posselt’s Ekki Hugsa 360°, which was able to produce more dynamism and contrast from its computer-generated images.
NME was able to experience Now or Never’s adoption of pioneering hardware firsthand on Friday during a performance by UK producer Actress. As the Ninja Tune artist’s sub bass frequencies resonated in the hall, NME briefly strapped into a “vibro-tactile haptic vest” supplied by the Newmarket Collective, for the use of the evening’s Deaf and hard-of-hearing guests.
Vibrating pods positioned along the user’s spine and other pressure points including the kidneys, wrists and ankles synced up to Actress’s deep, resonant and textural electronics, creating a surprisingly overwhelming stimulation translating the sensation of hearing the music. NME was unable to speak to any Deaf users at the event, but this hearing reviewer can imagine the devices being of particular use as a rhythmic aid for dancing in time with musical elements beyond the bass vibrations Deaf concertgoers are often forced to rely on.
That Now or Never could pick an international act as accomplished as Actress to open its Friday night spoke volumes about its roster. The night’s headliners, the UK IDM pioneers Autechre, did away with the impressive lighting rig, instead choosing to play in darkness, as they have for many years. Their typically obtuse set of clanging, clattering noise – think a box of springs being thrown down the stars, or a piece of sheet metal being flexed – tested much of the audience’s patience, a generational misunderstanding rather than a poor performance.
Perhaps Autechre should have come before Giant Swan, the live techno duo who played earlier and stole the show. “It’s 7.30pm!” bellowed a friend as the Bristol pair pummelled the audience with drum machines, synthesisers and sequencers that teetered on the edge of breakdown, infusing the set with a palpable sense of risk. Band member Robin Stewart’s vocals, run through a field of delays and effects, approximated ecstatic Gregorian chanting.
Saturday’s party presented a more mainstream experience. This co-production with Naarm’s behemoth event promoters Untitled Group hailed the return of the city’s beloved CC:DISCO! and a headline live set by Âme, here represented by one of its halves, Frank Wiedemann. The evening was well-received by the crowd but failed to hold this reviewer’s attention much beyond Âme’s admittedly excellent remix of J Dilla’s ‘B.B.E. (Big Booty Express)’. The intrusive corporate branding not only felt like the least interesting use imaginable of Now or Never’s screen, it also served to remove the audience from the moment.
The weekend came to a remarkable close on Sunday with an evening celebrating Queer artistry. Interstitial sets by Mirasia, the co-founder and mother of the ballroom house The House of Silky, and her family of dancers came between deeply emotional sets from Serpentwithfeet and Kelela. Serpentwithfeet showed that strength doesn’t always come from force, as his delicate, spoken-word confessionals and soothing R&B gifted the audience with a message of emotional solidarity. A particular highlight was the gorgeous, psychedelic and blissful track ‘Hyacinth’. “I hope we all leave here tonight a little softer than when we came,” said Serpentwithfeet auteur Josiah Wise.
Finally, the pre-eminent experimental R&B artist of her time, Kelela, held the stage with unrivalled majesty. Performing tracks from her catalogue, including her long-awaited recent album ‘Raven’, Kelela created in her words a “dance party with live vocals”. The crowd was definitely moving, but as with Serpentwithfeet’s set, the most engrossing moments were when ethereality was delivered with a message, in particular the track ‘Let It Go’. “‘Raven’ is dealing with patriarchal bullshit. Male stoicism. There’s a lot of ways to say it – this is the tender option,” Kelela told the crowd.
Now or Never isn’t an entirely new event, having been condensed from the now-defunct Melbourne Music Week and Melbourne Knowledge week, but it has so far had a remarkable debut with its international headliners and awe-inspiring setup. Perhaps its true and lasting mark will be felt this coming weekend when 70 artists take over six Melbourne venues for NONSTOP WKND – two nights of choose-your-own-adventure gigs during which the real lifeblood of Naarm’s music scene will be on display. After all, this city’s music scene will only thrive if punters support its small venues and artists as well as its big-ticket events. On paper NONSTOP WKND is about as good a reason as one can ask for to do just that.
Now or Never continues till September 2