Now or Never Festival is all about exploring potential futures through art, sound and ideas, and few acts better embody that spirit than composer collective STATHIS//DAVEY//KIM.
The Naarm-based group creates site-specific large-scale compositions using analogue synthesisers, treating sound like a living, breathing force.
When STATHIS//DAVEY//KIM (the last names of composers Mads, Kat and Sooji) step into the sprawling sensory world of DISTRACTION at the Now or Never Festival, they won’t just be performing — they’ll reach you right into your soul with their spatial and immersive sound. As part of Friday Night Social: DISTRACTION, the trio will perform a one-off non-stop live set woven into the festival’s late-night program.
Friday Night Social: DISTRACTION
- Compositions by STATHIS//DAVEY//KIM
- Visuals by Mel Huang, noom, Melody Woodnutt, ButohOUT!
- 26 Jul — 20 Dec 2025
- Science Gallery Melbourne
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“Primarily, we are a composer collective,” says Mads. “Our background is that we’ve come together and do large-scale installations for festivals. We often work with sound moving in physical spaces, and for a few years, we started performing live and taking some of those concepts we had from installations”.
The group describes sound as a “physical entity,” and that really captures what STATHIS//DAVEY//KIM do. Utilising three sets of stereo speakers, they transform the space into something otherworldly. “It’s sort of transcending in a way, to listen to sound and be present. But also feels like you’re accessing past memories, processing something, or even being in a future-focused space too,” adds Sooji.
Crossing paths at the Melbourne Electronic Sound Studio (MESS), a playground of rare and vintage synths, is where this trio came to be. “We each were accepted into an intensive PD course offered by MESS,” they recall. “We were probably the nerdiest people there and at some point Robin Fox asked us individually to collaborate with him on a project for Mona Foma. And we just kept going from there.”
As for their journey toward mastering this instrument (if you can even call it that), it all very much differs. Sooji started out experimenting with pedals and old Ensoniq sampler nearly 15 years ago. “Once I discovered MESS, I joined up and taught myself about synthesis via the Buchla Easel, which was a pretty weird way to begin, as it’s not very straightforward. But it had me hooked”.
Kat loved experimenting with electronic sounds but, as an instrumentalist, found the idea of playing through a laptop underwhelming. “When I was introduced to modular synthesis almost nine years ago, the tactile nature of creating sounds through patching and using dials to manipulate immediate sound worlds quickly became a lifelong fascination, and I’ve never really looked back.”
For Mads, she had already been playing keyboards for nearly 20 years when she discovered MESS and the world of modular synths. “I used to watch videos of my favourite artists giving studio tours of their modular synth collections and saw that these instruments were on a whole other level, but they were totally out of reach, being expensive and rare. Then MESS opened, and suddenly there was this unbelievable access to all of the instruments I’d dreamed of playing. I went really deep with it.”
Now, coming together as a trio has meant that they can take their love of synths to festival stages. With an experimental festival like Now or Never, STATHIS//DAVEY//KIM have even more access to creating something uniquely theirs. “Naarm has a really exciting experimental scene and this festival is all about challenging norms and inspiring new ways of thinking, encouraging open and inquisitive cultural conversations that are so imperative right now,” they all agree.
Friday Night Social: DISTRACTION is part of the wider DISTRACTION installation project, which sees international and local acts interpret what it means to be distracted in today’s world of endless scrolling. STATHIS//DAVEY//KIM peel the curtain back further with their performance piece, asking whether distraction is simply part of the human experience and if it could help guide us further into our inner worlds.
Friday Night Social: DISTRACTION runs from 26 July to 20 December. Find out more here.
Beat is a proud media partner of Now or Never.
