A festival of visual delights and audible treats, Dark FOMO, hosted at Red Betty, is the creative tribute to winter nights you didn’t know you needed.
Music meeting art installations is the most striking element of this unique festival. “This is all [from] the Red Betty community,” says bar owner, Sal Orpin. “They’re all people we’ve worked with before, one way or another.
“Jon Heath has got a really interesting brain,” Orpin says of the local visual artist involved. “He’s a genius for making luminous stuff. One of his pieces we’ll showcase is like a water feature with LED lights through it, about a metre tall, and the other is like a garden of flowers that change colour.”
These light installations and experiments with kinetic art will, Orpin says, compliment the music performed at Dark FOMO. One of the curating bands who will perform the event, USER, are very much about this sort of thing, anyway.
“USER will have special guest singer Deon S and guitarist Billy B. Both from The Black Heart Death Cult/The Bleeding Flares,” says drummer for USER, Andrew Nunns. “We’re going for a dark, dark set for this one. Come take the mind bending trip.
“If we just had a lineup of bands people would go, ‘well, what’s different? You do that every weekend’,” says Orpin, “So with this we’re making an extra effort. As soon as you walk into our courtyard it’ll be very red, and the idea is it’ll be a sanctuary. Certainly USER are very much about sense overloading and visuals, so yes, it compliments that.”
The second curating band performing at Dark FOMO, Kinematic, are only now exploring the realms of visual energy combined with music. “We have a special set planned for the night, designed around the themes that have inspired our music, album artwork and videos,” says Kinematic member, Mark Olszewski. “Joining us for this indie rock-tinged night will be fellow travellers The Mansions and Zac Anthony from The Wellingtons.
“Kinematic released a documentary of them making an album,” says Orpin. “So I think this all compliments what the bands are about as well as what we want to do, which is to create an extra special weekend.”
In terms of the bands and the music on the lineup, it’s a growth on the sense of community that already exists at Red Betty – USER and Kinematic already having strong ties with the venue. “Kinematic were one of the first bands to play with us,” says Orpin, “and they held a monthly residency last year. We’re very close with them, they’re almost like our house band.
“USER have played with us countless times and launched their amazing album with us – but it’s funny, both bands we have really close ties with.
“It really does feel like community with these people – part of the thing we’re after at Red Betty, we like to build a sense of community and a sense of all being on the same page, rather than being a tight-arse venue, we tend to go that extra mile with our community.”
For anyone who hasn’t heard Kinematic or USER before, or even gone to Red Betty before, there’s a simple way to describe what Dark FOMO is ultimately all about. “Turn your FOMO into JOMO – turn ‘fear of missing out’ into ‘joy of missing out’,” says Orpin. “The idea is that we wanted a weekender event, and both bands came up with an independent idea that we put together.
“It’s a free event – come down, have a drink, admire the art, watch some really good bands, and just have a nice time with us.
“I guess it’s all about illuminating the darkest weekend of the year.”
Head down to Red Betty on Friday June 21 and Saturday June 22 for their epic Dark FOMO event. It’s all free – check out the venue website for more information.
