Q&A: Behold Sugar Mountain
Shaking up what it means to be a music and arts festival in suburban Australia, Sugar Mountain returns next year for its largest-scale production yet.
Its second year under the almighty Mushroom Group umbrella sees the Melbourne festival dip its fists in cuisine with a restaurant experiment, offer an extended space to include the Melbourne Recital Centre, and host some of the biggest local and international names in music.
Back for its fifth year, the 2016 lineup features UK electro outfit Hot Chip, local instrumental rockers Dirty Three and this year’s ARIA Awards favourite Courtney Barnett, among others.
TMN chats to its organisers Pete Keen, Tig Huggins and Brett Louis about their on-day schedules, their take on the local festival market, and why the word ‘niche’ no longer applies to Sugar Mountain.
How did your restaurant experiment Sensory come about, did analytics help decide its inclusion at all?
Brett Louis (founder/director): The overall food and beverage offering has a huge impact on peoples enjoyment level throughout the day as a curatorial team we wanted explore how food, music and visual art could connect. It then developed into how we could use a tailored dining experience to showcase how artists from different worlds can collaborate and create something unique.
The concept is very much an experiment, its new and challenging to compose – that’s why it is so exciting.
Is hosting other facets outside music key to Sugar Mountain’s longevity?
Brett Louis: With the evolution from year to year, we now see Sugar Mountain as a cultural event. Continually trying to look to the future and to push the boundaries is definitely the key.
What’s your schedule like during the week before the festival?
Pete Keen (founder/creative director): It’s bananas to be honest! In a good way! It’s true what they say! – “The journey is often just as rewarding as the destination!”
For myself the week often consists of a 5am start. Early mornings on site, or running around town, picking up something or someone.
Primarily, we’re constructing the overall site with our production team. Installing the visual elements with our feature artists, & the help of our go-to team of mates / volunteers.
It’s a heavy work week from start to finish. Though it’s really fun work, with such a satisfying close!
We usually get together after work to have a late communal dinner, and then hit the hay ahead of another big day. The artists involved become a tight knit family by the week’s end, and it’s always sad to part ways once the big day is over. It’s by far the most hectic period of the year, but I love every moment!
Your promo leading up to the festival has a very niche vibe for certain creative subcultures…
Pete Keen: Ha ha, it’s funny ya know … I keep saying this one [2016] is our most accessible line-up to date! I’m glad we’re still seen as somewhat niche! (Thank you.) A good balance is what we’re aiming for. I’m not sure if the announce video is niche as such. Though we do try to stay true to our own unique vision, and deliver something quite ’different’ to the rest of Australia’s festival market. We definitely feel like the weirdos of the bunch, and I’m real okay with that!
Australia has very few festivals run by international operators, is this a good or bad thing?
Tig Huggins (booker/managing director): Our view is the music and touring economy is global, so I’m fine with any company looking to put festivals on anywhere, as long as they are respectful and add value to culture and creative community of those places.
Five years ago industry whispers showed concerns of a saturated festival market, where would you say we’re at now?
Tig Huggins: I think there has a been a general adjustment away from large scale touring festivals, with smaller, lower risk events now creating the bulk of the festival market. I think risk remains in the touring economy, due to a multitude of issues including, poor consumer confidence, regulatory issues (Sydney lock out), oversupply of events and the competitiveness of the Australian dollar. As always, festivals need to create as much value for their customers as they can in order to be competitive.
Sugar Mountain 2016 takes place at Victorian College of the Arts (VCA) on Saturday 23 January. Melbourne radio station and event partner 3RRR will be conducting a six-hour live broadcast from VCA on the day.
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