Originally created for the Melbourne International Jazz Festival, this year’s Supersense festival returns from 18 to 20 August with an impressive array of acclaimed musicians hitting the Victorian capital.

As a collaborative experiment, the festival is bringing together an extraordinary line-up of Australian and international musicians and artists operating across the lines of free improvisation, classicism, performance art, transgression, conceptualism, noise, poetry, comedy – the list is endless – in acts performed in Arts Centre Melbourne’s theatres, underground foyers and hidden spaces.

The bill features performers such as Japanese psychedelic rock group Acid Mothers Temple & The Melting Paraiso UFO, traditional Sami joik artist Ánde Somby, NZ’s Kimbra, US experiemental artist Arrington de Dionyso, Melbourne poet Autumn Royal, Russia’s Pussy Riot, cabaret singer Carolyn Connors, UK Brit pop legends Spiritualized in collaboration with the Australian Art Orchestra and the Consort of Melbourne, pianist David Chesworth and Dave Harrington alongside Deborah Kayser, Dylan Martorell, Erkki Veltheim, Felicia Atkinson, Freya Schack-Arnott, Fujui Wang, Hani Abdile, James Rushford, Jannah Quill, Jeremy Gustin, JG Thirlwell, Jim Denley, Jon Hunter, Jonnine Standish, Judith Hamann, Josten Myburgh and Michael McNab aka Tchake in a impressive weekend of events.

Australia’s contemporary underground music lovers can also enjoy the sounds of Kane Ikin, Kusum Normoyle, Laura Altman, Laurence Pike, Lisa Lerkenfeldt, Lucy Cliché, Marcus Whale, Maria Moles, Matthias Schack-Arnott, Oliver Coates, Oren Ambarchi, Peter Knight, Rainbow Chan, Robbie Avenaim, Rohan Ribiero, Sage Pbbbt, Samuel Dunscombe, Scott McConnachie, Sophia Brous, Tarquin Manek, TBP, Ying-Li Hooi and Zeena Parkins.
Meanwhile, one of the country’s most enigmatic musicians is the star of the Sunday sessions, celebrating the return of Overground, Supersense’s legendary ‘festival-within-a-festival’ from 2.00 – 6.00 pm in the Art Centre foyers. Acclaimed composer and double bassist Nick Tsiavos will once again fuse his enthralling ancient sacred chant with his otherworldly avant-garde techniques challenging our genre perceptions.

Tsiavos is renowned for his exploratory and often improvised performances that open new sound worlds.”Part of my work is the idea that art can be transformative. This experience is not just something that you consume and walk away from, but something that actually stays with you and changes you,” Tsiavos said, recalling his childhood visits to the Greek Orthodox Church.

“I think the rediscovery of that richness started feeding into the work I was doing.”

Inspired by his cultural heritage, Tsiavos combines the ecclesiastic psalms and chants of his early years and mixes them with elements of jazz, post-rock and instrumental elements adding a metaphysical quality to his unique melodies.

Just as it spans the spectrum of tastes in music, Supersense aspires to do the same with palate by presenting a range of mouth-watering specialty hampers. Available to pre-order with your tickets.

Tickets: $34 + $8.50 bf.
When: Sunday 20 August 2.00 pm
Where: Arts Centre Melbourne
For more information, click here.