If you’ve ever caught a live set from Naretha Williams, then you know just how special the experience will be when she takes over the entire Royal Exhibition Building on August 23 for Now or Never.
For Williams, a proud Wiradjuri woman, it’s all part of a creative process she’s spent 20 years refining.
In fact, sound is at the forefront of Naretha’s life. Working in the fields of contemporary music, composition, and sound design across her professional career, it’s only been within the last decade that she’s become a prominent name within the world of Melbourne’s electronic music scene.
Naretha Williams for Now or Never
- Clark / Naretha Williams / Sandwell District (Hybrid AV) / Veronica Vasicka
- Fri 23 Aug | 6pm-11pm
- Royal Exhibition Building
- Tickets here
Keep up with the latest music news, features, festivals, interviews and reviews here.
First discovering electronic dance music by way of clubbing back in the ’90s, it wasn’t something that truly resonated for quite some time. As her professional career grew and evolved, so too did her focus in different musical genres, and after a rediscovery of digital audio workstations in the late ‘00s, the journey truly began.
In 2019, Naretha experienced some success by way of BLAK MASS, a major music commission for the Melbourne Town Hall Grand Organ, with her profile swiftly growing ever-greater since. In 2023, she released Into Dusk We Fall, a new album cementing her as one of the genre’s most vital names.
A testament to her work in sound design and how it informs electronic music, Naretha will gladly admit she’s unable to describe the music she makes, though while it may have started off more abstract and slowly become “easier for the newcomers” to appreciate, it still maintains a sense of identity and place as its most prominent feature.
Next month, Naretha will be one of the names performing at Melbourne’s Royal Exhibition Building as part of Now Or Never on August 23. For Naretha, it’s going to be a special experience that gives her the opportunity to explore the sonics of a unique venue.
“I played a set at the end of last year at Volume Festival in Sydney, and we were in The Tank, which is this enormous underground venue as part of the New South Wales Art Gallery,” she recalls. “It had tons of reverb in a really strange kind of way, but it was such an interesting space to play in.
“I’ve kind of had the privilege of presenting in some amazing places and stages,” she adds. “I like playing around with this kind of scale in the room and I’m really excited to hear it on a big system, while leaning into this live interpretation of my music.”
This live interpretation will feature her performing Into Dusk We Fall, while being joined by Groundstar Music record label co-founder, Cyrus 9, on live drums.
“I guess this is going to be a little bit different to what people in Naarm might’ve seen before,” she explains. “It will be incorporating vocals for the first time, so there’s probably very few people who’ve heard me sing in the context of my work – certainly in Victoria.”
Most notably, the performance will be a special experience for everyone – artist and fan included – as Naretha’s Into Dusk We Fall album gets the live treatment it was never intended to receive.
“I would love to be playing and gigging a lot more, but I have to be very selective with the projects that I take on, just because I have a day job and it’s a lot of bandwidth,” she admits. “I’m very selective with the opportunities that I take, because I make sure that they’re presented at a certain level.
“But this record, the intention was always for it to be a studio project,” she adds. “So we’re just happy to have opportunities to present it when they come up and they align with what our aspirations are for the kind of presentations that we’ve had in mind for it.”
While Naretha also has new music on the way via the Groundstar Music label, the upcoming show for Now Or Never is set to be a unique experience that sees seminal electronic artists – British icon Clark, US musician and label owner Veronica Vasicka and the enormously influential Sandwell District – combining in a way that unites different factions of the electronic music community.
“Music and art in general has got a lot to do with building communities,” Naretha says. “I think there’ll be some really interesting crossovers within the audience and I’m excited to see where some of those crossovers are.
“I just think that Now Or Never have put together a really interesting program, and I’m proud to be part of it.”
Naretha Williams will perform as part of Now or Never on August 23. Find tickets and more information here.
This article was made in partnership with Now or Never.
