Six rooms at the Espy are being transformed into an immersive, interactive live music and art experience.
The grand old Espy has always been a big supporter of live music, the weirder the better. Heck, it was even home to the largest philanthropic arts donor in Australia, Alfred Felton. So we’re not surprised that the Swell live music and art team have chosen the new and improved Espy as the home. This time around Swell is converting six rooms at the Espy (including rooms usually closed to the public) into six different music and art experiences centred around the concept of “music as medicine”.
For those unfamiliar with Swell’s wild live music and art events, we’ll explain: each gig (there are five for this iteration) is a bit like a musical, arty choose-your-own-adventure. For two hours you can wander between the six rooms, where you’ll get up close to the musicians.
While we don't want to spoil the experience too much, we can tell you that Swell 4.0 involves sensory deprivation, musical buckets of water, a confession booth and dozens of glowing tealights (among other weird and wonderful things).
The line-up for Swell 4.0 includes Hayden Calnin and Nick Acquroff (n.y.c.k), Edd Fisher (of Waxo Paradiso), the General Assembly, Naretha Williams, Loose Tooth, Go Get Mum, David Sauvage (NYC), Hybrid Man, Deep Soulful Sweats and DollFace.
Swell 4.0 is the latest in the series of live, site-specific gigs – previous iterations of Swell have taken place inside secret rooms at the Carlton Club, in the run-down old Royal Women’s Hospital and at an abandoned ex-military fort at Point Nepean.
Tickets are on sale now, with a total of five performances from February 13 to March 3.
