Day Tripper will bring eight hours of music discovery to the southern end of Swanston St on the first Saturday of winter with RISING.
There’s no clear formula to the Day Tripper programming, which is spearheaded by RISING’s music curator Hayley Percy. This year’s lineup is just as multifaceted and unconventional as the previous two instalments.
Poet and MC Kae Tempest tops the bill, alongside US alt-hip hop poet Saul Williams, Flying Nun greats The Bats, Jamaican roots reggae royalty The Congos, and reborn Naarm hardcore band Straightjacket Nation.
Among the highlights are Melbourne post-punk veterans UV Race and art-rock outfit The Prize, both bringing their characteristically chaotic local energy to what is shaping up to be one of the most eclectic lineups Day Tripper has ever assembled.
Day Tripper
- Who: Kae Tempest, Chanel Beads, Kahil El’Zabar, Saul Williams, The Congos + more
- When: Saturday 6 June
- Where: Melbourne Town Hall and Max Watt’s
- Tickets here
Stay up to date with what’s happening in and around Melbourne here.
The performances will be spread across Max Watt’s, Melbourne Town Hall lower, Supper Room upstairs and the Portico Balcony.
“I definitely don’t think Day Tripper is geared towards that more traditional festival headliner, main stage feeling,” Percy tells Beat. “I think everyone might have a different headliner in the day. So, it’s trying to have those names in the mix at all different times throughout the day that appeal to different audience members, but there is that real Venn diagram feeling that multiple artists will be applicable to their taste.”
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Percy works closely with RISING’s artistic director Hannah Fox on the Day Tripper lineup. The eight-hour festival-within-a-festival was added to the RISING program to provide a snapshot of RISING’s overall artistic ambition, while also creating a distinct festival atmosphere.
“Those first few years, we were just doing a lot of in-venue gigs, which is awesome, but it is hard to give it that real festival feeling,” Percy says. “So, to be able to have something like Day Tripper, where there’s visual arts, dance performance and music in that one eight-hour bracket, it just feels like an identity.”
While there aren’t many clear links between Kae Tempest and fellow Day Tripper acts like Japanese electronica experimentalists NIKO NIKO TAN TAN and jazz percussionist Kahil El’Zabar, there is a method to the apparent curatorial madness.
“I always think about programming as a family tree and I always start with someone in the middle. This year it was Kae,” Percy says. “I really love Kae Tempest, they’re an amazing artist, and the new album, I love that it’s going for this more queer club space, poetic underplay vibe. I feel like from there, you start to create these tethers.
“Also, I went to a couple of amazing festivals last year in Japan, and then to Le Guess Who? in Utrecht, and I was really lucky to see some incredible live acts there, such as the Saul [Williams] and Carlos Niño show, The Congos, SAICOBAB, NIKO NIKO TAN TAN and Hugen.”
SAICOBAB, a band that merges Japanese rock and Indian raga, and Hugen, a band that merges Japanese folk and jazzy electronica, will both perform in Max Watt’s, where the programming is tapping into the venue’s synonymity with heavier music.
“I was thinking about Max Watt’s more in a pla
Xiao Xiao are an experimental punk-rap act featuring members of 1300, Slim Set and Baschoe. They’re one of the lesser-known names on the Day Tripper lineup, and Percy is excited to be putting them on a bill with storied performers such as Kahil El’Zabar and The Congos.
“I remember someone sending me a video of Xiao Xiao probably 18 months ago and I was like, ‘Wow, you guys are sick,’ and then when Day Tripper was coming together and we had a bit more of a punk-adjacent, hardcore-leaning vibe happening, it was like, ‘This is great.’
“Kahil El’Zabar is one of those artists that fits into this extremely niche box of being this incredible jazz percussionist, but if you actually explore his history, he’s played with everyone. He was in Nina Simone’s house band, he made Nina Simone’s headdresses for her. He has had such an interesting and prolific life, but then you pull him out of that context and put him into something like Day Tripper and it creates this whole different context.”
It’s an inspiring approach to festival programming, and one that wouldn’t be possible without the Melbourne music community’s proven embrace of the unorthodox and avant-garde.
“Melbourne has such a sophisticated music audience,” Percy says. “Curation doesn’t exist in a vacuum. Hannah and I work with a lot of independent operators, record store owners, other DJs, other promoters, other club nights. It’s just about cutting and pasting all of that to make it make sense through our lens.”
Get your tickets for Day Tripper, at Melbourne Town Hall and Max Watt’s, on Saturday 6 June here.
Beat is a proud media partner of RISING.
