After another year of fire, brimstone, blood and shit (and a bunch exceptionally good music and art, too) we take a look back at the five artists or performances that really tweaked our nipples at Hobart’s annual bacchanal, Dark Mofo.
Keep reading for visceral theatre, high-BPM pop and a trip into the bowels of themania-fuelled late-night party, Night Mass.
Max Richter: SLEEP
SLEEP is the German-British composer Max Richter’s 8-hour lullaby, a hypnotic, undulating work designed to help you do what it says on the tin. Entering the cavernous MAC2 hangar on the Hobart docks, one finds over 200 single cots fitted with sheets, pillows and blankets. Heated wheat packs and a tea station add extra warmth.
Starting at midnight, Richter, playing keyboards and other electronics, as well as a small string section from the American Contemporary Music Ensemble and a soprano take you on a slowly evolving journey into a state of slumber. Largely built on various permutations of one musical phrase, the surprisingly loud composition works its way into your dreams before waking you as light streams through the harbour windows at sunrise. People hold hands, others weep, some snore. Unforgettable, once-in-a-lifetime stuff.
Axon Breeze
Pierrot, or the sad clown, is an archetypal character of Italian commedia dell’arte theatre that dates back to the 17th century. Pierrot is an embodiment of the disenfranchised and has taken many forms – in the hands of Hobart’s Axon Breeze, the musical project of artist JR Brennan, that form includes fluffy arseless chaps that appear freshly shorn from a sheep, a five-string bass, synth pedals and a death metal growl.
Recommended
In tow are drummer Sam (happy birthday, Sam) and three young sprites whose mobile phones mirror the relentless gaze of the crowd’s own devices. The band describes itself as “grindcore for the dance floor” – they’re less Insane Clown Posse, more Insane Clown Party. A conversation between an older local couple sums up the set:
“That’s what I love about Night Mass, some crazy fuckin’ shit around every corner.”
“You know they’re from Tasmania?”
“You’re fuckin’ kidding me? I thought they were from Norway or some shit!”
NYX x DO.OMYOGA: Nada Sound Ceremony
After a wild Friday Night Mass, some re-centering is in order. Dense incense smoke wafts through MAC2 as howling lutruwita winds rage outside. Nearly 180 yoga mats cover the floor of the hangar as the UK “drone choir” NYX takes the stage, with yoga instructor Kamellia Sara of DO.OMYOGA leading the attendees through a simple asana routine.
As the poses increase in difficulty, the drones intensify, manipulated violin and crunching electric guitars are introduced, and bodies are submitted to deep waves of vibrations. It’s like having your third eye peeled open by members of the Bene Gesserit sisterhood in Dune.
Trophie
Opening Night Mass on Saturday, Trophie is poorly served on the outdoor stage on which she’d been scheduled (the gritty, multi-storied venue, Altar, would have been a better fit). But the Sydney artist’s committed, open-hearted set suggests she couldn’t have cared less.
The classically trained singer and producer pushes her impressive vocal abilities through textural electronic filters, and repurposes gabber, hardstyle and high-BPM club forms into a cyber-goth pop guise. Her epic, impassioned closing cover of Sinead O’Connor’s ‘Troy’ is black magic.
Florentina Holzinger: A Divine Comedy
Audience hypnotism, evasive motorised portaloos, start-to-finish nudity, real blood extraction and (potentially fake) blood painting, wood chopping and a race between hurdlers and a motorcyclist. An aging dancer, whose character is suffering from Parkinson’s disease, is brought to lethal orgasm by a younger woman with a strap-on, in a form of ecstatic mercy killing; later an actual car is dropped on her ‘corpse’. Jets of diarrhoea squirted on painters’ palettes provoke some audience walk-out. And an entire grand piano is suspended in mid-air, with its player and keys pointed at the floor. A person sets themselves on fire.
This riff on Dante’s Inferno by the Austrian choreographer Florentina Holzinger is far from perfect, but one can’t help but admire the sheer audacity and commitment from its all-women cast.
Dark Mofo officially concludes June 22. More info here