The Gospel Whiskey is taking over the studio at Brunswick's Next Wave for a pair of afternoon sessions built around a simple instruction: sit down and actually listen.
Hi-Fi Rye July lands on 12 and 26 July, pairing curated live music and DJ sets with the distillery’s Australian rye — the kind of unhurried arvo where you turn up for one drink and leave having had three.
Each session rotates through a different genre, with a rye cocktail mixed to match whatever’s coming through the speakers. Entry buys you a welcome drink, and the Gospel team will be stationed at the bar for the duration, happy to talk rye with anyone who’s curious. The format is low-key by design: live performance and easy listening with no hard line between them, and every excuse to lean over and ask the players what they’re spinning.
Hi-Fi Rye July
- 12 July, 2pm – 7pm
- 26 July, 2pm – 7pm
- Next Wave – Brunswick Mechanics Institute, 270 Sydney Road, Brunswick
- Find out more about the Gospel here
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Two afternoons, one grain and a room built for listening
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12 July, 2pm – 7pm
- Baba Noir (DJ set)
- Rita Bass (live set)
- ALGBRA (live set)
- Colette (DJ set)
The two dates sit inside The Gospel’s broader Rye July, the stretch of the calendar where the distillery leans all the way into its hero grain. Bars, pubs and kitchens around the country are pouring its whiskey through the month, there’s a fill-your-own cask on at Whisky & Alement, and these Brunswick sessions are where the music takes the baton off the bartenders.
There’s a logic to a whiskey brand booking a room full of acts, at least the way The Gospel tells it. The distillery has always pinned itself to Melbourne’s creative community — its own line is that it exists to shine a light on the people who inspire it — and Hi-Fi Rye July reads as that idea poured into a room. This is a hang built around records, players and a spirit the outfit has staked its name on, not a launch or a straight tasting.
First up on 12 July, Baba Noir opens on the decks, with live turns from Rita Bass and ALGBRA and Colette steering things home. It’s a tight four-act bill scaled for a studio rather than a festival field, which is the entire idea.
Horatio Luna’s spinning a record front to back — get in the room
26 July, 2pm – 7pm
- Eric Spanner x Acid Chess Club (DJ set)
- Ryan Berkeley (listening session — full EP/album — & live set)
- Horatio Luna (listening session — full EP/album)
- DJ Possum x Myles Mac (listening DJ set)
The 26 July date tips further into the listening-room concept. Eric Spanner teams with Acid Chess Club for a DJ set, Ryan Berkeley plays a full EP/album listening session before switching to a live turn, and DJ Possum joins Myles Mac to close the second date. Those listening slots are the format’s signature — an artist runs a whole record end to end, in a space set up to properly hear it, rather than chopping it into a mix.
The obvious drawcard on that second bill is Horatio Luna, the Naarm bass guitarist, producer and composer who came up through the 30/70 Collective and ranges across jazz, house and most of the ground between. His set takes one of those full-album slots, so it’s a chance to catch a body of work the way it was sequenced.
The whiskey half of the equation has runs on the board. Hand-built over 18 months in the backstreets of Brunswick — six-metre column still and all — The Gospel bills itself as Australia’s only dedicated rye whiskey distillery, working entirely with unmalted rye grown in South Australia’s Murray Mallee under master distiller Ian Thorn. Its straight rye has taken gold at international spirits competitions and cracked the world’s top 50 producers, so the cocktails matched to each set arrive as a genuine proposition.
Support comes from Next Wave and community radio institution PBS FM, and capacity is kept deliberately small — a studio, not a warehouse — which makes early booking the sensible move. Two afternoons, four acts each, a drink in hand on arrival and a bar run by people who want to walk you through exactly what’s in your glass. Pull up a seat and settle in.
For more information, head here.
