Abandoned Asylums, 32-Piece Percussion Acts and Brendan Suppression: A Look Back at Dark MOFO

Image: Nick Buckley

In music, there are dual concepts of consonance and dissonance. Traditionally, dissonant tones express things like grief and pain—they create tension, instability, discomfort. This is the soundtrack of Hobart’s Dark MOFO, MoNA’s annual art and music festival held to mark the winter solstice—the shortest, darkest day of the year.

The festival’s first weekend is focused on art, spiralling out from a 72-hour continuous performance from Australian artist Mike Parr in an abandoned mental asylum—a very public attempt to process his brother’s suicide.

Come the second weekend, music took centre stage, with headliners housed at Hobart’s historic Odeon Theatre. Friday night at the Odeon kicked off with Brooklyn composer JG Thirwell, and a powerful performance from Swans co-founder Jarboe. Rounding out the lineup was Californian singer-songwriter Chelsea Wolfe, a musician who blends two seemingly dissonant genres: goth and folk.

At times it didn’t work, the crowd’s murmurs rising above Wolfe, a tall figure craning over the mic, cloaked in all black. But then there were flashes of brilliance, moments when the droning guitars, pulsing drums and Wolfe’s voice all balanced perfectly—drawing the crowd, most of whom had flown straight down from mainland inner-city jobs, into the darkness. The weekend’s tone was set.

From the Odeon the crowd moved to City Hall for Blacklist, MOFO’s official afterparty. There came the night’s highlight, an insane performance by itchy-O: an electronic percussion band with 32 members. The stage was awash with drummers, some adorned with giant lit-up sombreros. Others moved through the crowd, masked, wearing speakers on their backs—spooking party goers by emitting screeches of feedback. “I don’t know how to dance to this,” a guy bobbing in front of me told the girl next to him. “I don’t think that matters,” she replied.

On the second day, tracing along the road back to the city, I passed Dark Park—a usually empty lot filled with interactive art pieces for MOFO. Across the yard a sign, which would be illuminated bright red come nightfall, read “Fear will eat the soul.” But by the time it was lit I was back at the Odeon Theatre, watching the festival’s headliner Eddy Current Suppression Ring.

Openers King Gizzard and the Lizard Wizard deserve a lot of love for pulling off not just one but two completely different sets in a single night, appearing on stage again just hours later at Blacklist.

But in a performance that can only be described a catharsis from a weekend of rising tension, Eddy Current Suppression Ring reigned supreme. Front man Brendan Suppression stalked about the stage, darkness and light—pure confidence overwhelming the crippling stage fright he battles by wearing his trademark black gloves.

Image: Nick Buckley

At one point, Suppression climbed up onto the balcony, leaning out over the sea of upturned faces below. He launched himself into the crowd again and again, inviting a parade of stage invaders. One fan in the dress circle stripped off to his underwear and danced in a blue spotlight. Another girl pulled herself onstage only to spear tackle Suppression to the ground. Security had to peel her tiny frame off of him and drag her away. He never dropped a note.

Dark MOFO was meant to be headlined by Savages but, at the last minute, the London band cancelled their entire Australian tour. Initially, the reaction was one of disappointment, even when Eddy Current was announced as their replacement.

But when the Melbourne punks finished their set no-one was thinking about Savages. The audience stomped their feet again the Odeon’s timber floors, shaking the antique theatre in their calls for an encore. Suppression was beaming. It was a moment of pure release.

In music, when dissonance becomes consonance it’s called a resolve—a conclusion so natural it seems inevitable. The thing is though, by very definition consonance cannot exist without dissonance, and vice versa. Without tension, there can be no joy of release. Dark MOFO’s curators clearly understand this, which is how—in a scene awash with festivals—they’ve managed to create an experience like no other.