Melbourne Music Week is easily overlooked as a council initiative to try to engage with the youth of today. Keep them off the streets and out of trouble, you know. This assumption means that you would not bother to check out the Melbourne Music Week 2014 program. That you would not visit the cornerstone of this 100-event-strong festival, the flagship venue QVM. That you will not experience the talent of any of the 250 contributing artists.
Your loss.
Melbourne Music Week 2014 is set to be huge with the full program announcement this week already sending the local music media into a frenzy and music-lovers scrambling to purchase tickets before shows sell out.
The QVM festival flagship venue, will open on 14 November 2014 and stage a range of local talent from dawn to dusk daily. QVM will see the Queen Victoria Market transferred into a live music mecca for 10 days, a multi-sensory experience for young and old. The opening night will be headlined by
Architecture in Helsinki, following an explosive night of Melbourne-made talent. If that's not your speed than maybe
Cut Copy will get your excited, as they play a DJ set of their local influences and the DJs who are defining dance culture in Melbourne currently.
The QVM venue will also host the
FasterLouder Lunchbox Series, a personal favourite, which sees a emerging local talent hit the stage from Monday to Fridays 12.30-1.30pm for you to enjoy over your lunch. Be sure to keep that week clear of lunch-time meetings, the Lunchbox series boasts a great line up this year.
Architecture in Helsinki
In a kooky addition this year, the
Lost Empire series present five music performances hosted in specially made or modified venues in the Melbourne. From an abandoned office in the Dockalnds to an operational factory, this great initiative is free, with all donations given on the night going directly to the artists.
Want to put your Roller Derby training skills to use? Coined as a 'Roller disco of comic proportions',
The Roller Jam at Thousand Pound Bend will be one heavily instgrammed event. You can hire skates at the venue. Get ready to humiliate yourself as the DJs take to the decks and you make more use of that ironic fluro sweatband than you had intended to.
After an epic party? Melboune Music Week has you covered with
Innocuous Laneway Party. A 12 hour party from 4pm to 4am (including afterparty at Gallery One Three), which sees Somerset Place turned into a projection art, live music and DJ paradise. Featuring famed projection artist Nick Azidis, who has crated pieces for the Gertrude Street Projection Festival and White Night, the party is set to be one to remember.
Cut Copy
If you like your music a little more refined, then head to
Bennetts Lane Jazz Club presents, which sees the iconic venue hosting a line up that is busting at the seams with local talent for this free one-night only event. Also worth checking out is
Tangerine Dream who will present an extraordinary performance at ACMI. The legendary electric group will play a live score to the 1977 American existential film
Sorcerer, as well as perform a separate show with
Black Cab at the Melbourne Town Hall. This German group, founded back in 1967 are guaranteed to blow your mind, in the most gentle way possible.
Tangerine Dream
Running throughout the duration of the festival at QVM, will be visual arts display
Synesthesia, which sees the results of a range of artists who were asked to visualise and interpret their own personal connection with Melbourne. The final posters will be on display and should well be worth a look. The project has been put together by brand design and strategy group, Clear Design, so expect a polished and professional exhibition.
This is only a taster of what is on offer. So be sure to not pigeon hole Melbourne Music Week as a dorky council initiative. The branding maybe slick, but it's all Melbourne-indie at heart. You can learn more about the festival at thatsmelbourne.com.au/mmw and I do strongly suggest pre-booking tickets as shows do sell out.
