Strawberry Fields are celebrating ten years this November, and they’ve just added 60-odd names to the bill for their second announcement. What started as a barely organized or functional psychedelic party outside of Tocumwal, has matured into one of Australia’s finest and most musically diverse parties, bringing together everything from live funk to psytrance to ambient to house. Highlights of the now complete (and predominantly Australian) lineup include DJ Seinfeld, Hiatus Kaiyote, Honey Dijon, Jess Zammit, Funk D’Void, Minilogue, Kamaal Williams, Sasha, Peter Van Hoesen, CC:Disco, DJ J’NETT and tons more.
On the topic of festivals, if you reckon you’re up for travelling a bit further (ok a fair bit further) than Tocumwal, the team behind Wollongong’s Yours & Owls Festival have teamed up with Astral People for a new NYE party dubbed Last Dance. On board for the inaugural event is none other than much-lauded house/disco/boogie-and-everything-in-between DJ/producer Motor City Drum Ensemble. Known for his extraordinary music collection, and for having three singles in the top six selling tracks of all time on Juno Records, MCDE is one of the best in the business. It’s going down at a secret beachside warehouse location across two stages – more details to be revealed in the coming weeks.
Ok, enough talk of summer beach side festivals, let’s talk the complete opposite. Fancy some relentless dystopian techno in a dark, industrial setting? Green Fetish Records founder Mickey Nox is debuting his live set for Melbourne Techno Collective this Friday at new-ish club Groundfloor. Nox has been teasing snippets of his modular synthesiser-infused live set for some time, and it’s safe to say the Melbourne techno community is excited. Also on board for the night is Mha iri, Craig McWhinney, Matt Radovich, Sam McEwin, Jay Reading and Peter Baker. Groundfloor is located in South Melbourne via a concealed back alley entrance, through a series of fire exits, low lit rooms and emergency doors – so you’ll need to do a little research on finding this place. Kicks off at 10pm.
