A love that lasts forever…

The honeymoon might be officially over, but our MMW bride Kate Crowhurst is in it for the long haul. We asked her to provide us with some thoughts and feelings about her first roll-in-the-hay as our MMW FOR LIFE competition winner… cause, as everyone knows: a happy wife means a happy life!  

Kate in her official wedding pose with MMW

I had always been aware of a derelict building on the corner of Elizabeth and La Trobe Streets. Like many Melbournians, I passed this ruin of a publishing icon on the way to work each morning and pondered its possibilities. This November all that changed. The City of Melbourne performed a Frankenstein’s monster job on the site and breathed musical life into a dying building – with results more music to the ears than Mary Shelly’s novella outcome.

The real strength of Melbourne Music Week in 2012 was its use of Melbourne’s infrastructure to serve and highlight our music scene. This included a free Thursday venue hopping night, Live Music Safari, where you could take in 40 bands across 10 of Melbourne’s best music venues, finding your way through the city in a treasure hunt of music genre exploration. The use of the Argus Building as the Where?House was inspired – whilst some teething problems were encountered on opening night, these soon vanished as the venue matured into a sustainable music venue. Where else could you select a vintage outfit, grab a decent bite from a varied choice of food more diverse than pub-grub, sit gazing into the stars from the open-topped half of the building and then perhaps venture down to the light show dance-floor dungeon, where music streaming from a beast sound system??

Playing dress-ups with Retro Market at Where?House

After an organ fuelled night at Melbourne’s Town Hall, I thought the week couldn’t be topped. I had always loved Collarbones, but their set at the NGV has sustained a smile on my face that remains even now – made all the more special by the stained glass shining on us from above, the dance moves on stage, and the balloon piles. Whilst originally sitting as ornaments designed to decorate the setting, the balloons were soon picked up by revellers and thrown through the crowd, adding to the fun-filled atmosphere of being muso kids let loose in the NGV. I never thought I’d be standing in the grand hall of the NGV, watching a contemporary synth band with my legs three-inches deep in balloons. The morale of the story is clear: don’t trust musos with balloons.

We finished the week Mad Max style, strobe lights competing for our senses with the music booming through Melbourne University’s underground car park.

I should also reveal on this day that I am married formally to Melbourne Music Week, through marriage certificate and classic wedding pose photograph. Our marriage has already beaten the length of talentless twits Britney Spears, or certain reality stars who I refuse to promote…. An article released in The Age this week commented that the happiest relationships are those that sustain 40 years of marriage. As a newly-wed looking forward, if Melbourne Music Week continues to woo me with its musical muscle as it did in 2012, then we’re off to a cracking start!

 

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MMW daily rundown: Saturday 24 November

WHO? WHAT? WHERE?

TODAY

Melbourne Music Market celebrates the artists, labels, zines and stores that make Melbourne’s music scene so great!

11am: Melbourne Music Market
For one day only, Melbourne Music Market will take over Fed Square, bringing together stalls from Melbourne’s favourite record shops, vintage outlets, record collectors and independant labels, and performances from some of our brightest local talent.
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12pm: Electronic Music Documentaries Screening Session – Where?House
Take advantage of this rare opportunity to see a back-to-back collection of documentaries on electronic music’s characters, history and inspirations. Attendance is FREE.
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ALL DAY: Look.Stop.Shop exhibition
A photographic exhibition featuring a long list of our MMW artists, housed in a variety of venues around the city. FREE.
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ALL DAY: I Love Myself – Where?House
A sculptural injunction into the space of Where?House. FREE.
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12pm: Concrete Music
Musique Concrete was a pioneering form of electronic and experimental music developed by French theoretician Pierre Schaeffer in the early 1940s. As homage to this seminal movement, the Office of Public Works (OOPW) will be hosting a series of ‘recording parties’ at Melbourne’s Section 8. FREE.
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2pm: Kids Dance Party – SOLD OUT
Flashing lights. Euphoric electronica. Smoke machines. All you can drink cordial. Throw your boogie shoes on because it’s the MMW Kids Series Dance Party! Supported by PBS, the ArtPlay space will be transformed to resemble an actual nightclub, local electronic hero Qua and resident PBS party-starter DJ Manchild will combine to throw down two hours of high-energy, kid-friendly techno and electro, reggae and rock, funk and soul. Supported by PBS.

2.30pm: Sun Beats Down – A Solar-Powered Picnic
Using mobile event infrastructure and showcasing local talent in music, art and organic food, Sun Beats Down will act as the final celebration of MMW’s Self-Made series. Celebrating innovative and environmentally sustainable technology, this picnic at Birrarung Marr will build on the important connection between art, music and sustainability. Emphasising mobile event infrastructure, the equipment will be ridden in by bicycles and fitted with sustainable solar-powered sound systems. FREE.
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6pm: Espionage – Where?House
This year,  The Operatives are inviting ascendant UK label Eglo and LA beatsmith Teebs (USA) to take over Where?House for one evening of unadulterated bass-driven madness! Eglo co-founder Floating Points (UK) leads the charge, and joining him will be label boss Alexander Nut (UK), spinning a mutant array of techno, dubstep, funk and more. Also featuring Africa Hitech (UK), Sean Deans, JPSNamEdd Fisher.
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TICKETS

7pm: Siberian Nights – SOLD OUT
As part of the MMW Labels Series, electro-indie titans Siberia Records are transforming the iconic Melbourne University car park into their own private vision of a post-apocalyptic, subterranean world, a place where sound, vision and architecture meld together into one unforgettable neo-futuristic night. Featuring: Kirin J CallinanForcesGatekeeper (USA)NunMatthew BrownJuggernaut DJs

7pm: Playing Under the Influence: Chris Bailey presents Tales of Terror
Chris Bailey, lead singer of punk legends The Saints, has always had an affinity for the darker side of human existence. Perhaps this explains why he’s chosen the Roger Corman directed Edgar Allen Poe penned horror-classic ‘Tales of Terror’. Starring Vincent Price, Peter Lorre, Basil Rathbone, the 1962 three-film film is regarded as one of Corman’s best in his famed Poe series.  Join Bailey on a journey into the underworld and discover how this nightmarish reverie changed the path of his own musical history.
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TICKETS 

8pm: Signal Presents //THIS THING//
Bringing together founding members Wooshie, Naps and Electric Sea Spider, the //This Thing// crew will be taking over the entire Signal precinct for a free, late-night dance party right next to the train line. With a combined sound that shifts from Flying Lotus-style post-hip-hop wonky, to Gaslamp Killer-esque sample frenzies and the narcotised beatmaking of Hype Williams, this is set to be the most blazing party the Yarra has ever seen. FREE – ALL AGES.
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MMW daily rundown: Friday 23 November

WHO? WHAT? WHERE?

TODAY

One of the great horror classics brought spectacularly to life on the big screen and live in concert with Goblin.

9am:  Morning Ritual
Get a double dose from your morning coffee fix as some particularly brilliant bands descend upon Flinders Lane.  Come to Little King Cafe and be treated to some delightful music under the sand-stone archway. Attendance is FREE.

Daily line-up:
Monday – Sweet Jean and Orbweavers
Tuesday – Francolin
Wednesday – The Sinking Tins
Thursday – Teeth & Tongue
Friday – Mining Boom.
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10.30 & 11.30 am: Kids Workshop – Robotica
Two half-hour workshops for pre-primary aged kids, led by star Australian percussionist Justin Dwyer and his robot friend: the state-of-the-art music-making machine Robotica. Held at ArtPlay, kids will use custom-built controllers to change Robotica’s expression and set off an array of different aural and musical cues. It’s ultra-fun jam session turned introduction to video mapping and electronic music!
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TICKETS

12:30pm: Mess+Noise lunchbox series: Terrible Truths - Where?House
Break up the day with Mess+Noise’s renowned Lunch Box series! Enfant terribles of the Melbourne post-punk scene, Terrible Truths play like they’re possessed by the ghost of late ’70s London. Think stomping riffs, seething energy and take-no-prisoners swagger.
Attendance is FREE.
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ALL DAY: Look.Stop.Shop exhibition
A photographic exhibition featuring a long list of our MMW artists, housed in a variety of venues around the city. FREE.
MORE INFO

ALL DAY: I Love Myself – Where?House
A sculptural injunction into the space of Where?House. FREE.
MORE INFO

1pm: Classical Revolutions
Classical Revolutions presents a series of five intimate pop-up performances on Little Collins Street, between Swanston and Elizabeth Streets. Featuring both canonical and lesser known works, be prepared for a beautiful, exciting and memorable encounter. FREE.
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6pm:  Where?House Screening – EXIT
Composer and Sound Designer Shaun Keyt (Viridian) introduces his work on the Melbourne-based production EXIT, followed by a screening of the film.
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TICKETS 

6pm: Invisible City 1987
A mini-festival of new music and art, featuring: Isaac Tichauer (SYD – French Express),   Superstar, Banoffee, LA Pocock (RRR), SDF1, Nature Streets, Nenad Macesic and more, and with featured artists including AWOL crew (live), Lopo Ekeroth, Matthew Bird (StudioBird), Joseph Flynn, Tom Morgan, OCA, Amelie Scalercio and Lauren Steller (Steller Atelier).
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TICKETS 

7pm: Decentralised Dance Party
This Portable Dance Party roams the night, generating complete liberating joy, street-by-street and block-by-block, onto buses and subways, into public fountains and beyond! Attendance is FREE.
Timetable and party route
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7pm: Cutters Records and Two Bright Lakes present… SOLD OUT
In the first event of its kind ever held there, independent heroes Cut Copy’s Cutters Records and the ever creating Two Bright Lakes will be taking control of the NGV’s majestic Great Hall and turning it into an all-in, kaleidoscopic, space disco.  Featuring Tim Sweeny (US), Teengirl Fantasy (US), CollarbonesBen BrowningKnightlifeNile Delta.
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8pm: The Likes of You – Where?house
The Likes of You, Melbourne’s doyens of all things tech and minimal, return with another take-no-prisoners evening of madness! Leading the charge this year is Troy Pierce (US) – playing his first ever show in Australia – and Matt Edwards AKA the mighty Radio Slave (UK). Also featuring Isaac FryarMike Callander and Safari.
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TICKETS 

8pm & 10.30pm: Suspiria – Cinemix, at ACMI
For the first time in 35 years, Italian prog maestros Goblin will be playing their legendary Suspiria soundtrack live and exclusive for Melbourne Music Week. SOLD OUT
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6pm: Beat Cinema
Inspired by film and forward-thinking music, Beat Cinema combines and captures these elements in a dark and usually unusual dance compound. Presented by Puke, Beat Cinema will fill the gallery of 1000 £ Bend with some of the gnarliest skate props, art and analogue media with plenty of room left for happy feet! Featuring Eprom (USA)LucidWillow BeatsPolat, Assemble The Empire, Andee FrostChronic Sans.
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TICKETS

 

 

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