Celtic Thunder
Round the Outside
Sunday September 27, Round the Outside bring their signature swing/honkytonk/countrypolitan aural gumbo to Barton Fink (816 High St Thornbury) with special guests. Two guaranteed all-singing, all-dancing, good-time cryin’ in yer beer songs from 5pm.
Rising Sun Presents: Millennium
Step through TerraCorp’s first ever Time Tourism rift and land at a party for the ages: the final evening of 1999.
Concerned about Y2K? Don’t be. It didn’t happen. We checked!
Plus, our ethically sourced time crystals mean you never have to worry about the negative effects of dimensional travel.
So dance through the turn of the century while your modern day worries melt away.
This rift is completely stable. Has been for several days now. (Our legal team asks that you not refer to it as “the hole.”)
Enjoy a party like no other, featuring a night of premium house and techno and more than a few surprises.
And remember, with TerraCorp, you’re in safe hands.
Christian Foyle, Mick Coll + Friends
Residency Launch Party part 4! Something special down south – musician friends jamming on a mix of soul, blues, rnb, southern rock, jazz, funk, chill – old, new, songs, instrumentals, classics, original, improv – fun and creative, hear some great players and singers, come on down and let’s get this thing happening!
Christian Foyle (Human Nature, Dragon, Russell Morris)
Mick Coll (The Tonalists, Bigfoot, T’Hammer)
James Ward (Babba)
Special Guests
Case Lee (vocals)
More TBA
Chilean Independence Day – Dieciocho Chico: Fonda Colectiva
Melbourne, we’re bringing Chilean culture, music, food and a proper carrete to Bodriggy Brewing Company!
Join us on Sunday 27 September from 1PM for a family friendly celebration of Chilean culture, starting with good food, dancing and culture, and building into a full-blown Chilean party!
-SORBO AMPLIO
-TRAGO AMARGO
-LAVANDITA
-NODOX COLECTIVE
-FELIPE Y MARINA CUECA DANCE
-Chilean food specials from the Bodriggy kitchen
-Piscolas
-Plenty of Bodriggy beer
-Family / Pet friendly
Bring the kids, bring your mates, bring your dancing shoes and come celebrate Dieciocho Chico with us!
La Fonda Colectiva is back.
Viva Chile, mierda!
The New Monos + Ice Cream Sundays
Thursday Sept 24 is the AFL Grand Final Public Holiday eve, and we are excited to host The New Monos for 2 sets from 8-10pm. Their music reflects contemporary Buenos Aires and celebrates cultural diversity. Expect a blend of Latin grooves, cumbia, reggae and hip-hop vibes. It’s one of the members birthday, no-one is working the next day, so we going to party.
They’ll be playing their latest songs, plus a few improvisations—as always, expect the unexpected.
DJ NARA will be spinning a mixture of cumbia, afro house, latin and house beats after the band from 10pm-1am
Ice Cream Sundays are taking over STINGRAYS, upstairs on the same night from 7pm with DJs:
Verse@ille
DJ Lowani
Swagley
Toby Liao
Pea Oh Ma
Henry Skillz
Hip-hop roots, open crate. Soul, funk, jazz, boogie, Latin, neo soul and the records hip-hop was built from.
Come for the music, stay for the chaos.
Free entry on both levels!
Big Queer Brunswick Party
Are you a big queer or a big queer ally?
Join us for the BIG QUEER BRUNSWICK PARTY at Quad Club from 7pm, Saturday 26 September after the footy grand final. Come dance for the Greens and bring your crew!
Early release tickets are $35 and are available for a short time only. First Nations and student/unwaged tickets also available.
Tickets for this event are strictly limited, grab yours ASAP to avoid any FOMO.
Catch these incredible performers + DJs HiPHA, Nepo Baby, HipHopHoe, b. caszh, Mr. Misty-Eyed, Nefertiti LaNegra, Zelda Moon, Lazy Susan and Kitty Obsidian.
Bunjil Place unveils a world premiere, a Grammy-nominated pianist and hip hop royalty
Bunjil Place is teaming up with the Melbourne International Jazz Festival to bring Saltwater, Sugar to Narre Warren this October.
The show is one of three events landing at the venue as part of a brand new partnership.
The collaboration doesn’t stop there. From 2027, it expands into a three-year commitment backing CrossCurrents: National Jazz Commission, a $40,000 annual fund supporting new jazz, improvised and contemporary music projects made in collaboration with international artists.
Each year, one project developed at Bunjil Place will premiere at the Melbourne International Jazz Festival itself.
Bunjil Place x Melbourne International Jazz Festival
- Young Monk: International Edition – Sat 17 Oct 2026, 7.30pm – 9.00pm, Studio
- The Art of MCing with Stogie T – Tue 20 Oct 2026, 6.00pm – 7.00pm, Studio
- Saltwater, Sugar – Wed 21 Oct 2026, 7.30pm – 9.00pm, Theatre
Check out our gig guide, our festival guide, our live music venue guide and our nightclub guide. Follow us on Instagram here.
Saltwater, Sugar
Saltwater, Sugar is the big one.
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- Wed 21 Oct 2026
- 7.30pm – 9.00pm
- Theatre, Bunjil Place
- Tickets here
Composed by Papuan-Australian musician and Australian Art Orchestra artistic director Aaron Choulai, it’s an hour-long work for a 16-piece ensemble that traces the interconnected histories of Chinese, Papua New Guinean and Indigenous communities during Victoria’s gold rush and Queensland’s blackbirding period.
Performed in English and Tok Pisin alongside vocalist Ngaiire and hip hop artist Joelistics, Saltwater, Sugar moves between spoken dialogue, sung melodies and improvisation, set in a sound world inspired by Duke Ellington.
It’s a fictional narrative built on real history, following the friendships and resistance that formed across the very divides colonial Australia depended on. There’s a content warning attached, with the show referencing historical instances of slavery.
Young Monk: International Edition
- Sat 17 Oct 2026
- 7.30pm – 9.00pm
- Studio, Bunjil Place
- Tickets here
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Young Monk: International Edition is a Jazz at Lincoln Center project celebrating the music of jazz pioneer Thelonious Monk, and this version lands with a genuinely stacked line-up.
Leading the ensemble as musical director is Grammy-nominated pianist Joey Alexander, who’s gone from teenage prodigy to performing at Carnegie Hall, the Apollo Theater and the White House.
He’s joined by New York trumpeter Skylar Tang, alongside Melbourne musicians Toby Barrett, Lily Appelt and Ebs Daramola. Together they reimagine Monk’s influential, unconventional compositions for a new generation, blending energy and imagination with respect for one of jazz’s most important innovators.
Young Monk: International Edition is co-curated with Jazz at Lincoln Center in New York.
The Art of MCing with Stogie T at Bunjil Place
- Tue 20 Oct 2026
- 6.00pm – 7.00pm
- Studio, Bunjil Place
- Tickets here
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The Art of MCing with Stogie T is a rare chance to learn from South African hip hop royalty.
Stogie T is one of the genre’s most respected voices across the continent, and this hour-long workshop digs into flow, lyricism, stage presence and connecting with a crowd.
Drawing on years as a performer, writer and recording artist, Stogie T shares practical techniques for anyone looking to sharpen their skills, whether they’re performing live or writing in the studio.
The Art of MCing with Stogie T is aimed at musicians, MCs and hip hop enthusiasts wanting a first-hand perspective from someone who’s built a career at the top of the genre.
For more information, head here.
This article was made in partnership with City of Casey.
Echoes Of Us is the new house and techno festival hitting Melbourne
Two enormous rooms, a lineup listed strictly A to Z, and Echoes Of Us is here to soundtrack your November.
Echoes Of Us makes its Australian debut across 7 and 8 November, splitting a heavyweight house and techno bill between two cities. The Melbourne edition rolls into Under The Bridge (aka The Underpass) on Graham Street in West Melbourne, before the whole production packs up and heads north to Sydney’s White Bay Power Station.
Echoes Of Us
- 7 November – Under The Bridge, Graham St, Melbourne
- 8 November – White Bay Power Station, Sydney
Stay up to date with what’s happening in and around Melbourne here.
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Leading the charge is Sidepiece, the Grammy-nominated American pair whose Diplo collaboration On My Mind picked up a nomination at the 2021 ceremony. They’re joined by German producer Marten Hørger, Croatian selector Matroda, French act Malaa and rising talent Hills, with the programming spanning tech house, minimal tech and techno. Sydney crowds also land an exclusive, with Australian favourite Wax Motif locked in for the White Bay date only.
The undercard tilts firmly towards the harbour city, with Coco Bevan, C100, Cassette, Clifford, Elroy, Jessi Lowkey and Rev all slotted onto the Sydney bill. Melbourne keeps things local through Will K, who takes the Under The Bridge decks solo.
As for the settings, the two venues share that same industrial pull. The Underpass does exactly what the title suggests, a raw space beneath Melbourne’s freeway sprawl, while White Bay Power Station is the enormous former generator hall on Sydney Harbour now handed over to large-scale events.
Tickets are moving now via Megatix, and there’s a code going for anyone paying attention: enter MFA at the checkout to trim the price. The format leans towards long, warehouse-style sessions rather than a sprawling multi-stage layout, so expect a tight, club-facing day that runs deep into the night.
For a first-year event it’s a confident swing, planting a big international electronic bill in two of the country’s most eye-catching spaces and betting punters will follow the sound across state lines.
For more information, head here.
Rent arrears in Victoria have more than doubled in just seven months
The Real Estate Industry Partners report, built on figures from data partner Dynamic Methods, found arrears sat behind 52.5 per cent of monthly notices in July, a steep climb from under 25 per cent back in December. Houses are shouldering far more of that load than units.
It isn’t only tenants falling behind, though. Notices driven by owners choosing to sell, end a lease or move back in rose to 42.5 per cent over the first seven months of the year, up from 33.9 per cent late in 2025. REIP flagged a March peak in sale-related notices, suggesting the state’s rental reforms may have pushed some landlords to cash out.
Victoria’s rental market
- Arrears drove 52.5 per cent of monthly rental notices in July, up from under 25 per cent in December
- Owner-driven notices (selling, lease endings or owners moving back in) climbed to 42.5 per cent across the first seven months of 2026
- Median weekly asking rent rose 4.36 per cent over the year, from $490 to $511.38
- By July, median house rents hit $550 a week, with units close behind at $531.46
Stay up to date with what’s happening in and around Melbourne here.
Rents kept grinding upward across the board. The median weekly asking price lifted 4.36 per cent, moving from $490 to $511.38, while houses reached $550 by July and units settled at $531.46. REIP also noted advertised prices in Greater Melbourne sit above what sitting tenants pay after a review, with that gap stretching wider for units.
The numbers land against the backdrop of Victoria’s rental overhaul, which scrapped no-fault evictions and pushed notice periods out to 90 days from late 2025. REIP’s read is that the changes may have prompted some owners to list rather than stay in the market, thinning the pool of available homes.
The Victorian Greens have seized on the data to renew their pitch for statewide rent controls and a major public housing build, arguing renters are wearing the brunt of a market skewed towards investors. The party is pushing for a two-year rent freeze followed by permanent caps, alongside tens of thousands of new public homes.
“These figures are grim but unsurprising. Renters are cutting back on food, heating, and having to make impossible decisions between buying medicine or paying rent,” Victorian Greens spokesperson, Gabrielle de Vietri said.
“It’s not surprising that one in three evictions are being issued because people can’t simply keep up. What’s shocking is that renters are being put in this situation in the first place. This isn’t even the full story when we know that so many renters who may be just scraping by when they get hit with another rental increase which may as well be an eviction notice.
“The answer to this isn’t endlessly chasing more private investors and hoping the market eventually delivers cheaper rents. Labor’s been doing it for years and clearly it doesn’t work. We need to actually bring rents down and give people somewhere affordable to live. That means rent controls and a massive build of public housing.”
For more information, head here.
Glowing streets and free jazz are taking over Moonee Valley this October
Presented by Moonee Valley City Council alongside the Little Projector Company, the Earth After Dark projection tours reimagine local streets, creeks and walkways with animated nocturnal flora and fauna. It’s the newest chapter in the council’s Igniting Creativity strategy, which has powered four years of arts activity across the area.
The Melbourne International Jazz Festival then rolls in late in the month, with a run of Sound Walk sessions and a pop-up show settling into the Crown Street Stables and Valley Lake precinct. Billed as listening walks, the Sound Walks send small groups along a set path to soak up the everyday hum of the suburbs, from birdsong to passing trams.
Earth After Dark in Moonee Valley
- Earth After Dark walking tour: 7pm, 2 October, 83 McNamara Ave, Airport West
- Earth After Dark cycling tour: 8pm, 9 October, the Boathouse, Maribyrnong River
- MIJF Sound Walks: 24 and 25 October, Crown Street Stables (Flemington) and Valley Lake precinct
- Jazz at the Stables (free): Crown Street Stables, 24 and 25 October
Stay up to date with what’s happening in and around Melbourne here.
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The Earth After Dark walking route kicks off at 7pm on 2 October from 83 McNamara Ave in Airport West. A cycling edition follows at 8pm on 9 October, rolling out from the Boathouse along the Maribyrnong River, and both feature projection pieces dreamed up by Moonee Valley artists and community members.
Across 24 and 25 October, three Sound Walk sessions form part of the wider Melbourne International Jazz Festival, with one leaving from Crown Street Stables in Flemington and two more threading through the Valley Lake area. The stables also host a family-friendly Jazz at the Stables pop-up as part of the council’s Art in Surprising Places program, and it won’t cost a cent.
Mayor of Moonee Valley Dr Rose Iser says the program leans on what the area does best, pairing great locations and community spirit with a bit of imagination. The result is a chance for anyone, young or old, to wander the neighbourhood and take in something a little out of the ordinary after dark.
For more information, head here.
Chapter NYE returns to The Timber Yard with a huge disco lineup
Melbourne’s dancefloor faithful, clear your calendars: Chapter NYE is back for a second run to send 2026 off in style.
After a debut edition that reimagined the Port Melbourne warehouse into a sprawling playground, Chapter NYE 26/27 doubles down with a bill loaded with house, funk and disco heavyweights spread across two stages. The whole thing arrives wrapped in a cheeky retro gag, with every act stamped onto a stack of worn VHS cassettes.
Chapter NYE 2026
- What: Chapter NYE 26/27, across two stages
- Where: The Timber Yard, Port Melbourne
- When: 31 December
- Tickets: on sale from midday, 23 September
Stay up to date with what’s happening in and around Melbourne here.
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Leading the charge are Andy Hart (feat. A-Z), Fantastic Man, Late Nite Tuff Guy and Tornado Wallace, joined by Wax’o Paradiso, Sasha Fern, PVRTAL, Pjenne, Sunshine and Vanna. Rounding out the roster is a deep bench of local selectors including Apolett, Coupla Selectaz, Dozie, Ladykoq, Licious, Mimosa, Navi, Slumdog and Super Dolce.
The Timber Yard, a former industrial site turned open-air party spot, gives the night plenty of room to breathe, its indoor-outdoor flow lending itself to a long day-into-evening session. Chapter NYE takes over the space from the afternoon and runs through midnight into 2027.
The crew is marking the milestone with a giveaway, handing six tickets to one lucky punter and five mates. Getting in the running means following @chapternye, sharing the lineup post to your story and tagging the friends you want beside you on the floor, with every comment counting as a fresh entry.
General tickets land at midday on 23 September, so a reminder in the phone won’t hurt. With both rooms running and a program that leans hard into groove-focused sounds, the Port Melbourne site looks set to fill fast.
Whether you’re after golden-hour disco or after-dark house cuts, Chapter NYE 26/27 shapes up as one of the bigger dedicated dance options for ushering in the new year.
For more information, head here.
Painters and Dockers are playing Bucket in full with a Sunnyboys legend
Painters and Dockers are storming into MEMO Music Hall on 3 October with a bona fide Sunnyboys legend in tow.
The St Kilda gig lands after a run of packed rooms in Brisbane, Sydney and Adelaide, where Painters and Dockers teamed up with Jeremy Oxley of the Sunnyboys for a rowdy double bill. Oxley hops on stage midway through the Dockers’ set to rip through a handful of old Sunnyboys favourites, so you’re getting two slabs of eighties rock royalty on the one night.
There’s plenty more to it than the guest spot, too. The band are also playing their raucous live record Bucket from front to back, dusting off the whole thing 40 years on from its release.
Painters and Dockers feat. Jeremy Oxley (Sunnyboys)
- What: Painters and Dockers feat. Jeremy Oxley (Sunnyboys)
- Where: MEMO Music Hall, 88 Acland Street, St Kilda
- When: 3 October, doors 7pm
- Tickets: from $88 + booking fee online
Stay up to date with what’s happening in and around Melbourne here.
Bucket first arrived in 1986, cut live across two nights at the old Tropicana Club in Richmond and the gloriously named Cosmic Comet Kaos Ball at Ormond Hall in Prahran. It landed the same year Halley’s Comet swung past Earth, a fittingly cosmic backdrop for a record this loud.
Produced by the band’s then-manager and Australian rock heavyweight Lobby Lloyd, the album bottles the sweat and swagger of the Dockers’ pub-circuit heyday, all brass-driven, satirical post-punk with the dial turned right up. Long treasured by fans and collectors, it’s held up as one of the sharpest snapshots of the country’s live indie rock scene.
Expect live staples like Kill Kill Kill, Jealousy and Organised Slime to get an airing across the set. The two acts go way back as well, with both Painters and Dockers and the Sunnyboys managed by Lloyd through the eighties, and the Dockers riding along on the very last Sunnyboys tour.
For more information, head here.
King Gizzard and the Lizard Wizard: ‘There’s a reason why people don’t do this…it’s just sadistic’
“We’re travelling a little less this year, although still seem to be crazy busy,” he says. For the guitarist and singer of King Gizzard and the Lizard Wizard, that’s likely busier than most.
Having released five albums in a single year, twice in their career, the band took their time with Alien Metal. While no strangers to heavy and dark music, their 28th record leans further into electronic music than ever before. “For us, it’s probably like a longer form journey that we’ve been on,” explains Mackenzie. “We’ve spent a lot of time developing and, I suppose, immersing ourselves in the world, but also the equipment. Learning how to make music together in this format has been a really exciting adventure that we’ve been on for quite a long time.”
King Giz’ Croxton Block Party
- Where: Croxton Carpark
- When: 17, 18 September
Stay up to date with what’s happening in and around Melbourne here.
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Guitarist Joey Walker’s love of techno led the band towards modular synths. They soon became a fixture of the band’s live shows, forming the backbone of their “rave” sets. “The shows have had a portion of the set where we’ve brought out a mountain of synths, and that’s evolved and changed over the last few years,” says Mackenzie. “That’s, in some ways, culminated in this record.”
Though the band’s genre-hopping might seem planned from the outside, Mackenzie says they usually have multiple projects on the go. Whichever is most likely to be completed becomes the next album. “Starting things is a lot easier than finishing things, I’ll definitely say that, and we’ve done a lot of starting things and never finished them too,” he says. “With six people in a band, a lot of it is getting everyone on the same page. Sometimes there’ll be something that three or four people will really want to do, but that’s not enough.”
While Alien Metal is unlike anything in the band’s discography, it doesn’t feel out of place. “You spend so long doing something that the thing that feels good is actually the opposite thing,” explains Mackenzie. “I think you tend to get pretty deep into one thing that the pendulum swings the other way, and I think that’s been a big part of why the records have swung wildly in different directions.”
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The band has recorded jams for albums before, but nowhere close to what they did for Alien Metal. “We actually spent a couple of weeks, all six of us together, just recording everything. We ended up with 50-odd hours of recordings, which is just a bad idea.”
“The first one we picked out was this long-form jam that was just Joey and I in the studio quite late, and it ended up being the blueprint for Alien Metal,” he recalls. “It was this hour-long improv between the two of us, where we were experimenting with our equipment, but it just had quite a special energy and spark.”
Even for a band known for their vast output, turning the improvisation into an album proved difficult. “We began a long, long, long, long, long exercise of just developing, refining, rewriting and rerecording,” says Mackenzie. “It was a punishing album to make, to be honest. The issue was that we were probably further away from being done than any of us realised the whole time.”
Much of the challenge came from having to relearn how to play together. Using Eurorack modular synths, the band not only had to build and patch the systems themselves, but also learn how to use them. “We’ve spent so long, 15 years or so, learning how to make music with each other with drums, guitars and bass and that sort of thing,” he says. “To throw that on its head and start from scratch was really hard, and felt like being born again.”
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With roughly 100 modules in each member’s rack, Mackenzie says they’re their own self-contained orchestra, though not easy to play in concert. “We had to reverse engineer a lot of the equipment,” he says. “Figure out ways to super reliably keep ourselves in sync, to pass the signals around without degrading, and to buffer the audio around the table.”
“One thing that I like about the format is, because you have to build your own system and because you have to make a patch yourself, everybody makes wildly different and unique instruments,” says Mackenzie. “It’s a really interesting and cool reflection of that person’s personality in a lot of ways.”
To make the instrument less intimidating, the band gave it a name. “There’s a reason why people don’t do this live, improvised electronic music with Eurorack — it’s just sadistic,” says Mackenzie. “Calling it Nathan felt like a humanising of the machine, in a way, and there was an instinctual reason to just take the edge off it. So maybe, deep down, it’s something like that. But I think we also just thought it was funny.”
Nathan will make an appearance at the Croxton Block Party, which the band also curated, in October. “It’s so good when it feels easy and aligned. We know all the folks at the Croxton, and I’ve done stuff with them for years and years. So it’s a cool, cool fit… and just nice to do a show in our backyard.”
Find out more here.
Four years off the tools, Violent Soho slid back into Melbourne like they’d never left
Their framing of the comeback was about as low-key as it gets: some blokes take up golf, this lot make noise together, and they’d simply missed doing it. The turnout suggested the time away had only sharpened the appetite.
Killing in the Name rolled out over the PA as a walk-on tape – the sound of a packed venue being lit like a fuse – and the place went off before a single chord landed. From opener How to Taste the floor was a churning, gleeful mess, and Vacation Forever and Lying on the Floor kept it there.
Stay up to date with what’s happening in and around Melbourne here.
Here’s the funny part: the four-piece of Luke Boerdam (vocals, guitar), James Tidswell (guitar), Luke Henery (bass) and drums barely had to spend a thing. Composed, unfussy, locked-in – they played it dead straight and let the punters supply the pandemonium. On a lesser night that might scan as coasting; this was a band who knew the material would do the graft and trusted the mob to bring the rest. The mix helped too, loud and clean, every riff landing where it should.
Blanket and Viceroy reset the room, with In the Aisle and Canada handing the diehards their reward. Viceroy in particular was the hinge the set swung on, kicking things up a rung and teeing off a merciless back nine through Saramona Said, So Sentimental, Like Soda, Jesus Stole My Girlfriend and, inevitably, Covered in Chrome. OK Cathedral’s stretched-out outro was a rare beat to catch breath before Kamikaze put boots back on throats; by the run home the Forum was one enormous, hoarse singalong.
The encore of Dope Calypso and Tinderbox was gravy. And it’s worth clocking the wider pattern: acts downing tools, murmuring “until next time”, then resurfacing for the emotional lap of honour has quietly become its own genre. Soho wear it lightly, treating the reunion less as a Grand Statement than a mates’ reconvening – the same lot back in the same sweaty room.
On record these songs are big, hook-first grunge-pop, engineered for radios and festival paddocks. Turned loose in a jammed Forum they become something blunter and better: less a set to watch than a thing to pile into. The band held the calm centre; the punters out front did the roaring.
Both looked delighted with the split.
There’s a new sing-along cabaret in town and it wants you to be the star
Bathroom belters and car karaoke queens, get ready: Sink or SING! A Sing-Along Cabaret hits Melbourne Fringe Festival this October.
After smash-hit seasons at Adelaide Fringe Festival and Edinburgh Fringe Festival, this interactive singing party has finally landed in Melbourne.
Hosted by award-winning vocalist and international vocal coach Amelie Peters, Sink or SING! A Sing-Along Cabaret is billed as the ultimate outlet for anyone who has ever secretly dreamed of being the star of the show.
Think Pub Choir, but make it cabaret; wholesome, hilarious and a little bit vulnerable, the 60-minute show takes audiences on a nostalgic trip through music, memories and self-discovery, tapping into that universal feeling of why singing your heart out is so satisfying.
Deep in your hot mess era or simply after a good night out, this is truly the excuse to have your main-character moment.
Sink or SING! A Sing-Along Cabaret at Melbourne Fringe Festival
- Dates: 14 – 18 October 2026
- Venue: Festival Hub: Trades Hall – ETU Ballroom
- Tickets here
Stay up to date with what’s happening in and around Melbourne here.
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Blending comedy, storytelling and full-throttle crowd participation, the cabaret transforms into something like a joyful group therapy session, backed by a live band and a stack of pop bangers.
Since debuting in Adelaide in 2024, Sink or SING! has picked up momentum fast, following a Gluttony season during the 2025 Adelaide Fringe and an international cabaret debut at Edinburgh’s Gilded Balloon.
Now the show is ready to turn a whole new crowd of Melburnians into a late-night choir. Audiences can expect a full six-piece live band, dubbed The Hot Mess Orchestra, plus a fully stocked bar for anyone needing a little liquid courage before their solo moment.
At the centre of it all is Amelie Peters, a classically trained vocalist and cabaret artist who graduated from the Elder Conservatorium of Music in Adelaide. She has performed with the State Opera of South Australia, toured internationally and was invited to perform at New York’s Soho Playhouse.
Her background across performance, songwriting and vocal coaching has made her one of the more in-demand names in the music industry, having worked with hundreds of artists worldwide throughout her career.
The show is produced by Interactive Theatre International, a company known for audience-driven, laughter-filled theatre, cabaret and immersive experiences with a reputation for putting audiences right at the centre of the story rather than leaving them as bystanders.
For more information, head here.
This article was made in partnership with Interactive Theatre International.
A new live dating show is taking over Brunswick Ballroom. So how does it actually work?
Dating apps got you swiping into oblivion? Human Love Quest is bringing back real, in-person romance to Brunswick Ballroom.
Dreamed up by mates Xander Allan, Conor Gallacher and The Captain, Human Love Quest is a live onstage dating show built as the antithesis of dating apps.
The format leans on the classic tension of three hopefuls competing for the attention of one solo contestant, and the whole thing is open to absolutely anyone, regardless of how they identify, their age, or what they’re actually looking for out of the night.
Human Love Quest at Brunswick Ballroom
- Doors 6:00pm, kitchen open 6:00pm, show starts 7:30pm
- 29 September, Brunswick Ballroom
- Apply here
- Tickets here
Stay up to date with what’s happening in and around Melbourne here.
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There are two rounds of dating in total, and every paired-up couple gets a complimentary glass of bubbles and their own private table, tucked away from the main crowd but still in full view of the room.
There’s zero pressure for anyone to see their match again once the show wraps, and the team behind it says a lot of thought has gone into making sure everyone feels safe and comfortable throughout.
There’s also a live reading segment called Ahoy There, where secret admirers in the audience get their submitted love notes read out to the crowd.
Organisers say the show runs on a zero-tolerance policy toward intolerant or anti-social behaviour, and every contestant has to fill out an expression of interest form first. That form doubles as a vetting process, designed to make sure each round is made up of like-minded people heading into it for the right reasons.
If you’re over the dehumanising scroll-and-swipe cycle of dating apps, endless matches that fizzle into small talk and never actually go anywhere, Human Love Quest reckons it’s got a better way to do things.
Anyone keen to be a contestant can fill out the application form here, and organisers say they’ll do their best to accommodate as many people and preferences as they can.
For more information, head here.
This article was made in partnership with Brunswick Ballroom.
Old Bar Country Sunday
Sunday October 4th, The Old Bar hosts country expansionists Rodeo Sideshow and dedicated purveyors of honkytonk to the gentry, Round the Outside in an afternoon of all-singing, all-dancing, good-time cryin’ in yer beer songs from 4pm. All happening in downtown Fitzroy, 74 Johnston St.