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Mona Foma: Go with the flow

By shifting from its established home in Hobart to the city of Launceston, those behind the Mona Foma festival were taking a risk.

Neneh Cherry and her band perform at Mona Foma in Launceston. Picture: MONA/Remi Chauvin.
Neneh Cherry and her band perform at Mona Foma in Launceston. Picture: MONA/Remi Chauvin.

By shifting from its established home in Hobart to the northern city of Launceston, those behind the annual Mona Foma festival were taking a risk. As has been well documented, though, Mus­eum of Old and New Art owner David Walsh is no stranger to calculating the odds of success or failure, having made his fortune through gambling.

After testing the waters with a series of concerts and a free “block party” in Launceston last summer, Mona Foma this year expanded to a three-day affair at the University of Tasmania’s Inveresk Precinct, a series of buildings and outdoor spaces that included the Queen Victoria Museum and Art Gallery.

Would they come and would they pay? That all depended on the line-up of artists.

“There is no theme this year,” festival curator Brian Ritchie told me last week. “It’s basically, ‘These people are very interesting: dig it.’ It’s a celebration of uniqueness; it’s a little simple, but it works for us sometimes.”

Unique isn’t necessarily a synonym for enjoyable, though. On Friday night, a small crowd took in a main-stage performance by American singer, songwriter and keyboardist Julia Holter, whose gentle experimental pop didn’t suit the 7pm slot. The careful dynamics and aching beauty of her work were evident, but so were its formlessness and a lack of consistent rhythms and melodies to engage a largely unfamiliar audience.

Julia Holter. Picture: MONA/Jesse Hunniford
Julia Holter. Picture: MONA/Jesse Hunniford

The opposite was true of African trio Les Filles de Illighadad, which followed Holter on the smaller second stage. Its sound barely shifted across an hour, yet repetition was at the heart of what these three women from Niger worked at. Two guitarists — one rhythm, one lead — flanked a central percussionist who played a water drum while all three musicians alternated chants. They spoke no English but the sunset crowd thrilled to its persistent groove, while the members grew in confidence towards the end to throw in the occasional ululation.

The first night’s headliner offered a mixed bag and sat somewhere between the two previous acts. Across 80 minutes, Oneohtrix Point Never — aka American composer Daniel Lopatin — showed his versatility by moving between solo piano and vocals to full-force electronic music accompanied by live drums and two keyboardists. There was an artful air to the decision to withhold the sugar hits of danceable grooves, but it did lend an uneven feel to the set, which tended to stop just as soon as it got started.

Mona Foma’s family-friendly atmosphere was best captured by an on-site onesie-making station, and throughout the weekend it was common to see mums, dads and kids flocking together in matching blue full-body costumes. It also was the sort of place where the merch desk sold children’s shirts bearing the slogan “Little Mofo”, as well as hot-pink bucket hats embroidered with an eggplant and peach — emoji-speak for two human body parts made for each other.

On Saturday, before a much bigger crowd than the day before, Southeast Desert Metal offered an energising selection of chunky riffs, sprightly guitar solos and double-kicking drums direct from Santa Teresa in central Australia, not a region commonly known for its fertile heavy metal scene.

Oneohtrix Point Never. Picture: MONA/Jesse Hunniford
Oneohtrix Point Never. Picture: MONA/Jesse Hunniford

The 75-year-old Ethiopian vibraphonist Mulatu Astatke showcased his genre-defining wares while backed by Melbourne band Black Jesus Experience. Tucked away at a “mystery slot” inside a small theatre, Melbourne indie rock songwriter Courtney Barnett played stripped-back versions of some of her best songs for about 100 people.

Neneh Cherry was an inspired choice for Saturday night headliner: the Swedish singer-songwriter’s set leaned heavily on her album from last year, Broken Politics. Given it was a collaboration with electronic producer Four Tet, the live result was a beat-heavy feast for the ears — thanks to Cherry’s six-piece band, which included a harpist, bassist and xylophonist — and a treat for the eyes, with an engaging light show and big-screen visuals guiding a big crowd through a quality set.

Afterwards, at the nearby Albert Hall, audiovisual artist Robin Fox filled the space with a tightly programmed laser light display accompanied by a soundtrack that veered wildly between soothing tones and industrial drones. With much of the audience lying on the carpeted floor or in beanbags, Fox offered a pleasant sensory shift from the crowded festival grounds.

Outside of the daily schedule at the Inveresk Precinct, which ran from 2pm to 10pm, there was a healthy and somewhat dispersed selection of arts and cultural happenings throughout Launceston, from Amanda Parer’s large-scale inflatable sculpture of a thinking man floating on the waters of Cataract Gorge to a dark dance piece at the Earl Arts Centre named anOther, which marinated in sinister tension and evoked the unsettling feeling of living inside a music video by Californian metal band Tool.

In the enervating heat of Sunday afternoon, Polish quartet Hanba! wound back the clock by pretending to be the world’s first punk band, born circa 1930. The group brought a spirited message of anti-fascist unity — backed by drums, banjo, tuba, accordion and clarinet — which soon got the crowd chanting along, language barriers be damned.

Inside a small room attached to the School of Creative Arts, groups of five queued to strap on virtual reality goggles and immerse themselves in a vision of the state’s famous Tarkine wilderness slowly disappearing, tree by tree, accompanied by a soundtrack composed by Midnight Oil guitarist Jim Moginie that mimicked the sound of buzzing chainsaws.

The final three acts ensured that the city’s first full-scale Mona Foma ended on a high. Barnett hit the main stage with her three bandmates for an hour of high-vel­ocity rock ’n’ roll, as well as a few sweet singalongs, such as her gorgeous 2015 song about the real estate market, Depreston.

Wwwwater. Picture: MONA/Rémi Chauvin
Wwwwater. Picture: MONA/Rémi Chauvin

Despite having released just a handful of tracks since 2017, Belgian act Wwwater was the revelation of the festival. Built on a thumping blend of electronic and acoustic drums, synthesisers and an engaging vocalist in Charlotte Adigery, the pop trio got the crowd moving in a way that few others managed across the weekend.

Wwwater’s storming set was a fine warm-up for the headliners — not Underworld, after the revered Welsh electronic duo pulled out a fortnight ago citing that old chestnut of “unforeseen circumstances”, but Sydney-born dance music trio Pnau. Accompanied by American singer Kira Divine, powerhouse drummer Tim Commandeur and a battery of stage lights, the group ably closed proceedings with a selection of irresistible songs such as Go Bang and Chameleon.

Throughout the weekend, Walsh was often seen near the front of stage, dancing with a group of friends, enjoying the show he had helped to fund just as much as the thousands of people who were wandering the festival grounds. There’s the strong sense that the nation’s cultural scene might be in better shape if a few more millionaires were willing to fund large-scale public events and entrust their running and logistics with skilled operators, as Walsh so clearly has here. Theme or not, the northern shift simply worked.

Andrew McMillen travelled to Launceston as a guest of Mona Foma.

Mona Foma Inveresk Precinct, University of Tasmania, Launceston, January 18-20.

Andrew McMillen
Andrew McMillenMusic Writer

Andrew McMillen is an award-winning journalist and author based in Brisbane. Since January 2018, he has worked as national music writer at The Australian. Previously, his feature writing has been published in The New York Times, Rolling Stone and GQ. He won the feature writing category at the Queensland Clarion Awards in 2017 for a story published in The Weekend Australian Magazine, and won the freelance journalism category at the Queensland Clarion Awards from 2015–2017. In 2014, UQP published his book Talking Smack: Honest Conversations About Drugs, a collection of stories that featured 14 prominent Australian musicians.

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Original URL: https://www.theaustralian.com.au/arts/music/mona-foma-go-with-the-flow/news-story/5b3581d4ec641edfdf94a5f4cfb36cc3