Beats Per Minute: Maroochy Music And Visual Arts Festival Review

What do you get when 21 bands, 10 DJs, 30 visual artists and 5 bunnies get together on a golf course? The answer, Maroochy Music And Visual Arts Festival, AKA a brilliant cocktail of music and arts.

Upon entering the scene, you are immediately greeted by an array of culinary options ranging from burritos, wood fired pizzas and German sausages to Churros and potato slinkies. Continue past a bunker and you’ll be surrounded by five seven-metre tall illuminated rabbits part of ‘Intrude’ by Amanda Parer.

Not far from here you’ll come across what looks like a lone shipping container. On the inside, however, it’s a mini-gallery belonging to singer/songwriter Bertie Blackman. She exhibited a number of canvases displaying ink and watercolour images of surreal cats and rabbits. Just beside this lay large, colourful cubes showing a variety of murals painted live throughout the day by the likes of Conrad Square, Gus, Jay Beez, Thom Stuart, Fuzeillear and The Zookeeper.

Turn left to exit arts and enter music. The festival featured just one main stage, which meant no clashes, but it also meant half hour breaks between each band. During each break the Ghetto Blaster area showcased a number of DJs throughout the day including Tim Helmy, Elleyet, Toby Walker, DJ Shift-T and Jesswah. The C&O Garden was also occupied between sets by Pilgrims, Gian, Jazzella, Wash, Agnes J Walker and more.

Waax opened up the main stage nice and early at ten AM followed by Marlon Williams, Harts and Hiatus Kaiyote. Following this was Sydney group, One Day, comprised of Horrorshow, Spit Syndicate, Jackie Onassis and Joyride. Although not a group that has been performing together for very long, they had incredible chemistry on stage and seemed well practised. They also just seemed to really enjoy, not only the performance, but their music as well.

Gang Of Youths took the stage afterwards and jumped into an aggressive and intense set – something unexpected. Front man, David Leaupepe, stared down the audience with wild and crazy eyes. He mixed it up every now and then as he attempted to bump and grind his way around the stage and managed to stack it with both grace and sex appeal. David jumped into the audience giving them everything he had. The band experience some minor sound issues near the start of their set but they drew little attention to it and continued on despite the vocal layer being barely audible for their opening song.

Alpine experienced some similar sound difficulties during their set. They couldn’t hear much up on stage and therefore missed the mark in their opening song ‘Crunches’. They went from strength to strength with each song, however, and managed to pull it together performing favourites such as ‘Foolish’ and ‘Damn Baby’. Leading ladies, Phoebe and Lou, were extremely energetic, bright and quirky as hell.

DZ Deathrays took the stage next and then The Kite String Tangle shifted the mood into the night time hours with a beautiful and mesmerizing set. His silky smooth vocals had the crowd hooked. He brought out crowd favourites like ‘Arcadia’ and brought Dustin Tebbutt up on stage for ‘Illuminate’. He also invited Tiana Khasi on stage with him to perform ‘Stone Cold’. So far The Kite String Tangle performed the stronger set of the day.

Backing it up with another strong set were Flight Facilities. It was hit after hit for Hugo and Jimmy smashing out ‘Crave You’, ‘Sunshine’, ‘Clair De Lune’ and ‘With You’. Kurt Kristen helped them out on stage with his smooth and sexy vocals. Owl Eyes performed a large portion of tracks effortlessly as well. Even when she would giggle or miss a beat, it still sounded good; she could do no wrong. Flight Facilities certainly left the audience on a high.

With a dull half hour break between sets Hermitude were left to pick the crowd back up. Although they performed an engaging set their sound was way too quiet too make much of an impact and their music is best played loud. For two DJs stuck behind a desk, however, they did well. Luke Dubs and Elgusto tried to mix it up a bit and step out in front of the desk but their set-up limited them.

As the day came to an end it would seem to be a success. Announced as an annual event, it’ll be interesting to see how next year’s festival will differ from this year’s debut event.

MMVAF gallery

One Day