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Credit: Philistine DSGN
Nick Murphy, Laura Marling, AIR and The Avalanches will join Fleet Foxes as headliners of the lineup for Vivid LIVE 2017, the world’s largest festival of lights, music and ideas now in its ninth year at the Sydney Opera House.
As part of the annual creative symposium, Murphy, formerly known as Chet Faker, will present a site-specific in-the-round project titled Missing Link presented over four nights and following in the footsteps of last year’s Cercle performances from Bon Iver. As one of Australia’s vanguard electronic musicians, it’s fitting that Murphy’s return performances will coincide with those of electronic genre pioneers The Avalanches, who will host a Since I Left You Block Party featuring DJ Shadow, Briggs and Sampa The Great. That event, an Australian exclusive, will involve the al fresco performance of their seminal debut album of the same name in its entirety for the first time since 2001.
A strong electronic theme continues with performances from French duo AIR, who will stage their sophomore Australian performances as part of the festival. Likewise, Beth Orton, Richie Hawtin and Amon Tobin will also appear at Vivid, with the latter soundtracking the lighting of the Opera House sails, which this year will be cast in the light of a mesmeric artwork by Sydney artist Ash Bolland titled Audio Creatures. In collaboration with Carriageworks, Goldfrapp will also perform as part of Vivid in anticipation of the release of their first offering in four years, Silver Eye.
The man behind an early contender for one of the year’s best albums Process, Sampha, will also appear in his debut Australian performances in the intimate Drama Theatre space – I anticipate that one will be a sell-out. There’s also a strong Australian contingent to this year’s line-up, with Haitus Kaiyote front-woman Nai Palm, Melbourne trio Camp Cope, and cult favourites The Necks also performing in the Theatre space.
In keeping with tradition, there’ll also be a run of shows (and a pop-up bar) curated by the late, great Goodgod. The Super Club series will feature acts including DJ Harvey; Steffi and Magda Bytnerowicz; Karizma and Ben Fester; and Kenji Takimi with Noise In My Head & Nite Fleit over a series of four performances that, true to its name, promise to shake up the city after dark.
Vivid LIVE takes place this year from May 26 until June 17. Tickets go on sale to the general public from Monday March 20, at 9.00am AEDT. You can find out more information here.
Tile image: Philistine DSGN
Cover image: Courtesy of the artist
