How To Create A Specialised And Immersive Sensory Experience

With endless choice in the digital age, it's no wonder that curation is so in vogue — from streaming services to events. But while there have long been 'curated' music festivals in Australia, only Melbourne's Sugar Mountain encompasses progressive music, visual art and food. 

The annual "Summit of Music and Art" first happened in 2011 at the Forum. Sugar Mountain then had a layover year in 2014, relaunching last summer with a new partner in the Mushroom Group at Southbank's hallowed Victorian College Of The Arts — imagine an inner-city Meredith. Nas, that indie and hip hop idol, headlined, performing 1994's classic Illmatic. He was joined by Kim Gordon's Body/Head, Ariel Pink, and ODESZA. Sugar Mountain 2016 again has a diverse roster with such names as Hot Chip, Julio Bashmore and Kelela. The homegrown contingent includes feted art-rock instrumentalists Dirty Three, indie superstar Courtney Barnett, and next-big-thing Sampa The Great.

"We definitely have seen a strong interest especially in Melbourne around food and bev in the past three to four years, and it's about how we can best implement that into Sugar Mountain."

Brett Louis — one of Sugar Mountain's three founders, together with Simon "Tig" Huggins and Pete Keen — recognises the curator's new cultural prestige. Yet, for him, the festival curator is as much a facilitator. "It's also about creating a specialised environment," Louis says. Notably, this year Sugar Mountain is hosting Sensory, "an immersive restaurant experiment" conceived by tapas restaurant Bomba, new media types Tin & Ed, and Cut Copy. "So you get a unique experience for that one-off festival day."

Sugar Mountain's organisers have their own areas of expertise. Huggins handles the music bookings. Keen concentrates on the visual arts. Louis, who has "a pretty strong food and bev and operational background" as manager of Fitzroy's Workers Club, is big on the culinary. Nonetheless, each has a say in the overall programming.

Critically acclaimed, Sugar Mountain has generated a grassroots mythology. People still talk of Kirin J Callinan's (contentious) 2013 slot involving an epileptic and strobes. However, the VCA move has allowed the promoters to become ever more ambitious, 2015 "a great test case". Louis is determined to continuously develop Sugar Mountain, "looking far beyond to what people are doing in other parts of the world, on a smaller and a larger scale, and trying to find a way to bring that back to what we think is a very Melbourne experience, but a forward-thinking experience as well". He's added more emergent gourmet outlets (cue: the kebab joint Biggie Smalls). "We definitely have seen a strong interest especially in Melbourne around food and bev in the past three to four years, and it's about how we can best implement that into Sugar Mountain, because food and bev is one of those things that used to be an afterthought for a lot of larger festivals."

Keen likewise commissions visual artists to "create something unique for Sugar Mountain". "They might have worked on other festivals where they recreate their work and go from one [event] to the next, but it's completely different for them for Sugar Mountain because it's brand new." In 2016 Paris-based Nonotak's audiovisual installationists will return with a world premiere.

Musically, Louis admits that he and his cohorts "love what is new and fashionable and any new buzz band and producer to come out". He's anticipating the Melbourne premiere of Kelela, a star of the "new wave R&B". "We've been tracking Kelela for maybe two years now," Louis enthuses. "I know she delayed a couple of releases and was waiting for the right time. We feel that her latest EP [Hallucinogen] and all the little bits and pieces she's done over the past 12 months have been really great." One of the UK's hippest house DJs, Julio Bashmore, will head the Boiler Room. "I thought Julio Bashmore's release [the album Knockin' Boots] last year was a great one," Louis says. "To have him come out and play the festival, we're all really excited."

Yet Louis and co also believe in "showcasing" those vintage acts that have impacted them and others on the bill. And so Dirty Three will play the main stage at sunset. Indeed, Sugar Mountain 2016 doesn't have "the one sole key headliner", being "more of a multidimensional cross-platform", its programming diffuse.

At a time when festival line-ups are under scrutiny for gender balance, Sugar Mountain is to be praised. It has several cutting-edge female identities — aside from Kelela and Barnett, there's Honduran-American electro-pop activist Empress Of, and hip hop poet Kate Tempest. Meanwhile, New York rapper, and Riot Boi, Le1f is repping urban music's rising LGBT subversives. "I think you're always conscious of that sort of stuff, because you pick it up via osmosis, just being within the industry or being a part of society and [the] community," Louis says of the push for pluralism. "But it is always based on the quality of the music and how much we love everything they put out."