The Most Dynamic Crack Squad Of Sonic Mavericks Yet Assembled in The Supernatural will unfurl every feasible flavour of four-dimensional hi-fidelic psychedelic fun, over three daze and two nites in an extravaganza befitting this landmark occasion.

A coming of age? More a progression thru regression. Back to the future. The Time Space Continuum has never wobbled like this. A wild joyride over peakier peaks, trippier troughs, rockier rock and funnier fun. More Classic. More Future Classic. More Cosmic. More Space. More Flow. More Specialists handpicked for specific hours of the clock. Ask a busy person if you want something done. Full employment; full spectrum enjoyment. Everything enhanced, naturally. Supernaturally. Preternaturally. Dennis Cometturalli. All under the light of a Silvery Full Moon….. and then…. for 51 minutes and 8 seconds, under the spooky red non-light of a Total Lunar Eclipse. Can you FECKING believe it.

Atmosphere, atmosphere, atmosphere. Troposphere. Can’t be jinxed. Unmissable for purist and tourist alike.

WHATEVER, HYPE LADY. WHO’S PLAYING??

The most magnificent menagerie imaginable. Plumage galore. Birds of paradise, birds of prey, birds on a wire; a bionic birdsong of….etc.

(clears throat)

GRINDERMAN * CUT/COPY * KURT VILE & THE VIOLATORS * MUDHONEY * ICEHOUSE * GANG GANG DANCE * EXPLOSIONS IN THE SKY * LADYHAWKE * BLACK JOE LEWIS & THE HONEYBEARS * OFF! * ADALITA * FUTURE OF THE LEFT * FRANK FAIRFIELD * HARMONIC 313 (DJ SET) * JOELISTICS * BIG FREEDIA * UNKNOWN MORTAL ORCHESTRA * GRAVEYARD TRAIN * TIM SWEENEY * OSCAR + MARTIN * CASH SAVAGE & THE LAST DRINKS * ANGUS SAMPSON * BARBARION * KING GIZZARD & THE LIZARD WIZARD * JUICEBOXXX * VIRGO FOUR * EAGLE & THE WORM * THE RECHORDS * DAVE GRANEY & THE LURID YELLOW MIST * MATT SONIC & THE HIGH TIMES * THE TOWN BIKES * CITY OF BALLARAT MUNICIPAL BRASS BAND * MASTER SONG TAI CHI * SILENCE WEDGE * A TOTAL LUNAR ECLIPSE * Very Special Guest MC DENNIS COMETTI

RUN THAT BY ME AGAIN?

Grinderman
Nick Cave, Warren Ellis, Martyn Casey and Jim Sclavunos. Wild, visceral, psychedelic, animalistic, primal, brilliant, crude, stripped, naked, grotesque, inspired, fierce, hilarious, feral, schizophrenic, unhinged, lascivious, ominous, excessive, savage, furious, tender, beautiful.

A sonic bomb going off; all the skill, power, energy, desire and expressive brilliance of these four wizards unleashed in every direction. No rulebook. The wildest thing outta anywhere will wreak glorious havoc in the Amphitheatre Saturday Night. It’ll be their Only Victorian Show. Finally… It is actually happening. Thank you, Gods.

www.myspace.com/grinderman
www.grinderman.com
www.youtube.com/watch?v=WuDP7c3Zd8I

Cut/Copy
Melbourne band. World loves them. Global sensation, frankly. Been at it for years now and stuck to their guns. Deserve it, big time. Plenty of quality hits. We sincerely thank them for making the time in their nutso schedule to accept our invitation to play a special set in the Australian Bush. Bulgaria, Chile, Iceland, Brazil, Colombia, Buenos Aires, Meredith.

www.myspace.com/cutcopy
www.cutcopy.net
www.youtube.com/watch?v=Bdn0MYDATtE

Kurt Vile & The Violators
Walk into any record store worth its vault in the world right now and chances are they’ll recommend Kurt Vile. A true artist. Been making records and small release albums and 12”s for years. Sounds like… Neil Young backed by Television? Like a Crazy Horse album without hits but every track a killer? Almost like a Frankenstein Meredith artist? He looks like half the crowd from Meredith 1995

It’s tender and evocative, elusive but companionable, tough in the gut and the arm but swollen in the chest and giddy in the head. There are actually TWO sunsets at Meredith and this dude’s gonna play the Friday night one. First trip to Oz. Kurt. See.

www.myspace.com/kurtvileofphilly
www.kurtvile.com
www.youtube.com/watch?v=mdIXrcH7QLU

Mudhoney
Touch me, this is fully sick. In the first few years of Meredith there would be no band the crowd would have liked to see there more than Mudhoney. Come late Satday arvo Meredith 2011 and there’ll be no band you’d rather walk on than the Seattle rock-with-a-smidgeon-of-weird-ass-psychedelia legends. Mudhoney have an odd connectedness to Melbourne. Some say they sound like they could be from Australia, especially Melbourne. They rarely play now, only a few shows a year so this is a treat. Supernaturalfuzz big muff.

www.myspace.com/mudhoney
www.ocf.berkeley.edu/~ptn/mudhoney
www.youtube.com/watch?v=bNj7ZyZy7cw

Icehouse
In 1981 the young Sydney new wave band Flowers’ debut album, Icehouse, became the highest selling debut album in Australia, because of songs like Can’t Help Myself, We Can Get Together, Sister, Walls and title track Icehouse. If that album came out this year or last, the same thing would happen.

It got crazy after that, with a name-change, Top 40 success in the US, UK, Europe, and Japan, and tours with David Bowie and The Cars. It got even crazier after that, with album Man Of Colours being the highest local selling album by an Australian group – ever and Electric Blue a US Top 10 smash hit. They went on to sell over 8 million records. Massive! Anyway. Songs, songs, songs, songs, songs. Love In Motion, Hey Little Girl, Great Southern Land, Street Café, Crazy, Electric Blue, No Promises, Man of Colours, My Obsession, Touch The Fire, Don’t Believe Anymore…

Iva Davies has kept Icehouse well away from the grubby end of nostalgia and indeed any live shows have been a very rare thing in the last decade or so. This is here now to be enjoyed. A greatest hits set, including a bunch of Flowers. Saturday evening changes channel for an hour. This is an honour, and it’s gonna be fun.

www.icehouse-ivadavies.com

A Total Lunar Eclipse
This year at Meredith the planets will align. Well, one planet, a satellite moon and the Sun to be exact. On Saturday night, a TOTAL LUNAR ECLIPSE will take place. WHAT? A lunar eclipse occurs when the Moon passes behind the Earth so that the Earth blocks the Sun’s rays from striking the Moon. This can occur only when the Sun, Earth, and Moon are aligned exactly, with the Earth in the middle. Hence, a lunar eclipse can only occur the night of a full moon. The moon will be eclipsed ‘in totality’ for 51 minutes and 8 seconds, from 14:31:49 UTC (Coordinated Universal Time) which is about half past midnight, about the time Grinderman finish their set. As it takes a few hours for Earth’s shadow to completely block our view of the moon, the effect of the eclipse will be intensifying (the “penumbral” phase) prior to that. THESE THINGS AREN’T EASY TO ARRANGE. Took a lot of planning for this to come together. Good work Aunty. The Supernatural Amphitheatre will be extra spooky that night. Let alone the fact that for Meredith’s 21st there will be a full moon…

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/December_2011_lunar_eclipse

Gang Gang Dance
Friday night’s dancefloor party turns cosmic. GGD are from NY but are sonic bowerbirds, scavenging exotic sounds and rhythms like Nigerian guitar music, UK grime and African trance, bundling it all into one hypnotic blissful psychedelic stew. Leaders of a scene. Spiritual and sensual. Fun and funky. Can Can dance.

www.myspace.com/ganggangdance
www.ganggangdance.com
www.youtube.com/watch?v=2R7k1_kOqvk

Explosions In The Sky
So a big segment of Meredithians will be verrrrry excited by this. EITS play a kind of inspired and inspiring music loved over the years for being expansive, emotive, dynamic and epic. You could experience a full 24 hours in the Amphitheatre in just one of their songs. They have endured (effectively outlasting post-rock) by being High Quality.

They asked themselves, when making their new album: “is this the music we wanted to make when one of us put up the flier in the record shop eleven years ago and three of us answered it?” The flier said "wanted: sad triumphant rock band."
It’ll be no pyrrhic victory Friday night. Victory party. Unwind your Mind.

www.myspace.com/explosionsinthesky
www.explosionsinthesky.com
www.youtube.com/watch?v=JzIK5FaC38w

Ladyhawke
Pip Brown played guitar in a NZ band, Twolane Blacktop, then formed Teenager with Nick from Pnau, and now plays guitar and writes songs under the moniker LADYHAWKE, named for a Michelle Pfeifer character no less. She has a classic 70’s vibe; a bit Stevie Nicks maybe, a bit Pretenders… and is apparently a big ELO fan. And yeah A LOT of people dig her. Nominated for a Brit. So…. 70’s. Rock. Star… Festival. DO IT. Primetime Friday Night.

www.myspace.com/ladyhawkerock
www.ladyhawkemusic.com
www.youtube.com/watch?v=bhPh6ou8Kbk
www.youtube.com/watch?v=gUyuEyVb6KU

Black Joe Lewis & The Honeybears
Surefire AmphiHit, all the way from Texas. Dy-na-mite. A bombastic, loud, ultimate party rock’n’roll band (with horns) - a surprisingly scarce commodity. In the months after this was locked in, several friendly scouts reported back from events all over the world on what we should get for Meredith and Golden Plains - it was uncanny how many times BLJ&THB came up as The Best Thing Going. Bullseye.

www.myspace.com/blackjoelewis
www.blackjoelewis.com
www.youtube.com/watch?v=D8h6mwP0Tog

OFF!
Ohhhhh, YEAH BABY!!!! Heaven on a stick right here. The greatest hardcore punk frontman of all time gets his legendary buddies together to play classic California hardcore. Ultimate pedigree + super-enjoyable band concept + perfect execution = too much fun. Keith Morris (Black Flag, Circle Jerks), Dimitri Coats (Burning Brides), Steven McDonald (Redd Kross), Mario Rubalcaba (Earthless/Hot Snakes/Rocket From The Crypt) are OFF!

“The best way that I can describe it would be, with me coming from a band called Black Flag and the history that I have with Steven having been in Redd Kross, and taking that vibe and mixing it up like Led Zeppelin had at their highest energy level," says Keith. “The dark party rages on” says their bio. ON! Saturday. Go OFF!

www.myspace.com/off
http://offofficial.com
www.youtube.com/watch?v=qNdHMdhumF4

Adalita
Listened to Adalita’s album? It stopped my loungeroom in its tracks. Phones off, lights out. Shoosh. Different to the guitar freakouts and wild energy of Magic Dirt, this whole new set of songs is equally tough and bold, intense, exhilarating... in a different way. POWERFUL. UPLIFTING. Adalita does not take shortcuts, she goes through it. This is a masterwork, a future classic. Could go on and on but can’t put it better than this.

“I remember Magic Dirt's first Meredith so well......the panel vans, muddy bodies grinning in the sunshine, insane moshing, tripping off my nut, losing a tab of acid in the dust backstage, picking it up and dropping it again, everyone shrieking with laughter, lots of stereos and tents, falling over tents, going into tents that weren't our tents, sweaty, crazy times and lots of cool dogs running around making everyone happy. Now here I am again, ready to spy the Pink Flamingo Bar from the arc of the stage. mmmmmMeredith“ – Adalita, June 2011

www.myspace.com/adalitamusic
www.magicdirt.com
www.youtube.com/watch?v=zZ9TNT0aUNI
http://vimeo.com/27203917

Future Of The Left
Not usually given to quote NME but: “Future Of The Left is one of the best things to happen to alternative music in years”. FOTL have much-loved McLusky in their DNA, and anyone who witnessed their pivotal Meredith set in 2003 will think of them fondly. Since then, FOTL have their own, bigger cult going. Fair enough too. The set often contains McLusky rolled gold wacklassics like Lightsabre C@*ksucking Blues, To Hell With Good Intentions, Without MSG I Am Nothing, and killer FOTL servings like Manchasm, Small Bones, Small Bodies, Arming Eritrea, and the, ah, breezy pop of You Need Satan More Than He Needs You. Friday Night. Right Hemisphere.

www.myspace.com/futureoftheleft
www.youtube.com/watch?v=tAwliet2vqo
www.youtube.com/watch?v=1_XbYz9J4W0

Frank Fairfield
Do yourself a favour and check this guy out. From The Weird Old America. Pre-Hollywood, pre-rock’n’roll. This isn’t even the blues. Goes back to Pilgrims across America, North Carolina, a bit of Appalachian, twisted folk. Must be the finest exponent of that around any parts. Born out of time, doesn’t care, and boy can he play. Old-standard skills. A captivating, understated fellow (“Just talking to him for a few moments makes your heart begin to beat a little slower.” - THE GUARDIAN); the personality comes out vividly in the music. Theatrical but not theatre. Soulful. Heartfelt. Rumoured to inspire trances.

“A young Californian who sings and plays as someone who’s crawled out of the Virginia mountains carrying familiar songs that in his hands sound forgotten: broken lines, a dissonant drone, the fiddle or the banjo all percussion, every rising moment louder than the one before it.” - Greil Marcus, no less.
Sunday morning coming down.

www.myspace.com/frankfairfield
www.laweekly.com
http://larecord.com
www.youtube.com/watch?v=eCnaxeE8BcU

Harmonic 313 (DJ Set)
Did you know one of the leaders of the Bass scene, regarded as The Best In The World, a total innovator, is currently living in Sydney? We get a lot of requests for dubstep, and finally we got a brilliant exponent of it. Brit Mark Pritchard, formerly on Warp, has been celebrated everywhere from Top of the Pops to Fabric. His prescient Reload project was an enormously influential slice of British techno. Then his collaboration as Global Communication spawning the seminal ‘76:14’ is regarded as one of the greatest ambient albums of all time.

Harmonic 313 (313 is the area code for Detroit) is what hip hop would sound like if it was made by cartoon Jedis trapped inside a Roland drum machine. You can hear both sides of Detroit; the Detroit which produced Derrick May and techno but also the Motor City’s hip hop progeny. Late late late Friday nite.

www.myspace.com/officialmarkpritchard
www.harmonic313.com
www.youtube.com/watch?v=E00c-T9EquE
www.youtube.com/watch?v=W7uYqJJBiD0

Joelistics
TZU were one of the first Hip Hop groups to be embraced by pub going rock fans. Joelistics arrived with them at that time as a complete artist and a born entertainer, and he’s only improved with time. The guy’s unreal. Above all perhaps, he’s a great host. You’d trust your night out to him. And your Days. The Australian hip hop scene has seen a lot of change in the last decade, but one constant is the quality of Joelistic’s output, from TZU thru to the outstanding new album Voyager. Mid arvo Saturday. It’s a Glorious Feeling.

www.myspace.com/joelistics1
www.joelistics.com
www.youtube.com/watch?v=QDxaCUkk9n0
www.youtube.com/watch?v=FaujfaggYCg
www.youtube.com/watch?v=7SronbLNILU

Big Freedia
Another flavour of PARTY. Queen Diva of the Bounce Scene (and the Sissy Bounce Scene for that matter). Cross-dressing son of a truckdriver regularly slays New Orleans ghetto audiences – and crowds don’t come much tougher than that. Wins ‘em over as Performer Extraordinaire. Jeff the Brotherhood, heroes of last year’s Meredith told us Big Freedia is the best live show in America right now. If you can make it at Meredith you can make it anywhere. It’s up to you. Late late late Satdee Nite. Big fun.

www.myspace.com/bigfreedia
http://bigfreedia.com
www.youtube.com/watch?v=m-JWvu0w2fI

Unknown Mortal Orchestra
Heard Ffunny Ffrends? It’s a total gem. Mystery surrounded what this band was at first. There was just one soundcloud track and a whole lot of excitement. Turns out it’s one ex-Kiwi Mint Chick who is based in America. Even though we traced them, it’s still kinda hard to pin UMO down. It rocks but it’s not rock, it grooves but it’s not dance music. Again, the name says it all. Could sound different again by December! So accomplished and undeniably great; not their first rodeo. Kickstart Friday.

http://unknownmortalorchestra.com
http://vimeo.com/22981854

Tim Sweeney
Tim Sweeney’s show Beats in Space is one of the most influential and legendary radio shows on the planet over the distance. Still the barometer. Like a John Peel or Charles “The Electrifying Mojo” Johnson to their respective people, Tim Sweeney’s show gave context to a whole new world of DJs and producers that are turning heads; a subscene of cosmic, nu-disco and beyond. He’s an international connector, conduit, conductor. Tim had such a great time playing Meredith 09 that he’s planned a vacation around playing it again. Late late Friday nite.

www.youtube.com/watch?v=DYpvZENRn8E

Cash Savage & The Last Drinks
Cash might spend a winter afternoon coaching the Old Bar Unicorns, then that night belt out songs of heartbreak and revenge in her gutsy blues voice and use every ounce of her Being to boldly lead her big ramshackle country band and indeed the pub and all its contents As Far As They Will Go on a wild soulful stomp until band and audience merge into one loose wild joyful raucous party, kinda Pogues-like. The world’s most renowned motivational speakers have got nothing on Cash. Will egg us on Friday evening.

www.myspace.com/thelastdrinks
www.cashsavage.com.au
www.youtube.com/watch?v=63cIeIbguFM

Oscar + Martin
First thing that struck was that sublime, rare voice. Next was the minimal beauty of the soundz. What they leave out is as inspired as what they leave in. Apparently one of them grew up in the folk scene. Their music is like folk music made on modern technology. They are the most talked about new band in Melbs this year and with good reason. Cleanse your palette Saturday Matinee. Quality. Minimalist.
“The last time a crew of Melbournian kids this inspired and unexpected came along, they were called the Avalanches.” Anthony Carew (The Age EG)
“…all you really need to feel this album’s immense joy is to hear it: I just hope you can find a copy.” Lawson Fletcher (Mess and Noise)

www.myspace.com/oscarandmartin
www.twobrightlakes.com/oscar_and_martin.html
www.youtube.com/watch?v=9s3eCuFnaZI

Barbarion
The heaviest band in Melbourne - with a combined weight of nearly 700kgs. Not sure what these Melbourne guys do during the week, but occasionally of an evening they do this.

www.myspace.com/barbarionoz
www.barbarion.net
www.youtube.com/watch?v=cLHXYLHMhKI

King Gizzard & The Lizard Wizard
The first single from Melbourne’s (Geelong claims them too) King Gizzard & The Lizard Wizard’s upcoming Willoughby's Beach EP, 'Black Tooth', is two minutes and thirty seconds of music to rob banks to.

Tune here: http://bit.ly/qP1M4X

As for the live incarnation, a castrated, skeletal rendition of this brimming psych-pop just didn’t seem right. The solution: six, seven, sometimes eight garage-rock devotees jamming these concise gems into a sprawl that’s loose, driving and bursting with jangly energy. These jams go from sparse, Grateful Dead-like segues where scrapes and harmonics bounce around the room to waves of loosely aligned frequencies and half the band hollering on the chorus. They’ll kick the whole 21st off.

http://kinggizzardandthelizardwizard.com
www.facebook.com/kinggizzardandthelizardwizard
www.youtube.com/watch?v=C82ht2WZ7Zw
www.youtube.com/watch?v=HrIOM6-zjHA

Juiceboxxx
Renegade loco party starter. “The Milwaukee Maniac”. Main aim: get crazy. Gotta have at least one of these. “The Buddy Holly of hip hop” - CHUCK D. Who knows what that means or what will Happen. Late Friday Nite.

www.myspace.com/officialjuiceboxxx
http://juiceboxxx.com/blog
www.youtube.com/watch?v=W5vpyix0ueI