Not Without Friends: Melbourne’s latest one-day dance festival in a spectacular location
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29.11.2024

Not Without Friends: Melbourne’s latest one-day dance festival in a spectacular location

Not Without Friends
Word by Chantelle Rogers

If you're someone who enjoys dance music with a side of high art, then Not Without Friends is a summer festival for you.

Melbourne producers/DJs Luke Alessi, Jordan Brando, and William Kiss, along with Untitled Group, have come together for Not Without Friends. This is an all-day, all-night festival combining dance music and art culture surrounded by Heide Museum’s Sculpture Park. 

Following on from their previous EP launch at HER’s rooftop earlier this year, their goal is “creating music that makes you feel good”. The project began with the trio writing tracks via a Bluetooth speaker in Thailand. For Alessi, Brando and Kiss “the project is free, unrestricted and ever-evolving”.

Not Without Friends

  • February 1, from 5pm
  • Heide Museum Sculpture Park
  • Live music: DJs Luke Alessi, Jordan Brando and William Kiss
  • Art: Heide Museum of Modern Art 
  • Tickets on sale now 

Keep up with the latest music news, features, festivals, interviews and reviews here.

 

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With over 15 years of friendship between them, they’re hitting the mark with their own music too. Kiss has hit four million streams on Spotify and signed to the likes of UNCAGE, Club Bad, Bush and Carl Cox’s 23rd Century. Following that success, Alessi and Brando performed a killer Strawberry Fields set which you can check out on Youtube or Soundcloud. 

Heide, once the home of artists John and Sunday Reed and a school for some of Australia’s major impressionist artists, is located off Templestowe Road. It’s also hosting Gateway Festival in December, the space becoming increasingly renowned for some of Melbourne’s great dance and art collaborations. 

With five gallery spaces on six hectares of parkland, Heide has over 3,600 works of art. The sculpture park features over 30 works including Jeff Thomson’s cows, a throwback to its origin as a dairy farm. For Lesley Harding, Artistic Director, “It’s a place where art, architecture and landscape are shared and enjoyed, and where creative experimentation and achievement is celebrated”. 

For tickets to Not Without Friends, head here.