Australia’s best up-and-coming bands will take over Brisbane next month for this year’s edition of BIGSOUND, the largest music conference in the southern hemisphere.
In what will be its fourteenth year, venues throughout the city’s live music precinct Fortitude Valley will play host to numerous speakers from across the world as well as 150 live Australian music acts.
Keynote addresses at the conference will be delivered by Midnight Oil frontman and former Australian politician Peter Garrett, as well as editor-in-chief of the Pitchfork Review, Jessica Hopper.
The Chicago-based writer is influential in the advancement of women in music journalism, as well as having covered some of the entertainment industry’s most serious stories.
Perhaps most notable is her 2013 Village Voice exposé into the sexual assault allegations against urban musician R.Kelly, where she and Jim DeRogatis brought to light offences that had been largely ignored by the media for over a decade. The piece gathered 8 million clicks in just three days: the biggest story in the history of the Voice.
“One of the things that makes Jessica’s writing compelling is that her view that you shouldn’t/can’t consider art without taking into account the artist or the audience for which their music is intended,” Nick O’Byrne, BIGSOUND’s Executive Programmer, says.
“In order to criticise and analyse music you need to understand the context in which the music is being made and the artist who made it. She uses music as a looking glass through which she deconstruct wider society and you end up learning about much more than music when you read her writing.”
The live music portion of BIGSOUND, set across 15 Brisbane venues over two nights, showcases the diverse talent across Australian music and the artists who will undoubtedly represent the country on the music front in years to come.
The miniature festival has become a breeding ground for successful acts both in independent and more commercial music across all genres. Past BIGSOUND LIVE acts include dance music heavyweight Flume and indie-dance act RÜFÜS – now both headlining major festivals in Europe and the US – as well as ARIA award winners Boy & Bear.
“It’s such a huge leg up for smaller, independent artists,” says Elise Higgins – known as Fait onstage – who will play a showcase during the festival. “Coming from Perth, these kind of networking/showcase opportunities are quite hard to come by. It’ll be excellent exposure and, being self-managed, a great opportunity to network with influential industry folk and learn from the best.”
In the warm-up to BIGSOUND, we’ve put together a playlist with our picks of the best acts from the 150-strong lineup:
