Aunty’s been tuning the frequency for 8,581 days. Or thereabouts. 

From tell her she’s dreamin’ to dream come true.

The static’s cleared. Picture perfect.

TV On The Radio On The One And Only Stage.

My mind has changed
My body’s frame, but god I like it

“Nimble wrongfooters of expectations, neither wholly TV nor radio.”

TVOTR reset the table. Percolating in a Williamsburg sublet. Emerging via sketchy home recordings dropped on coffee shop counters. Their mutant art-rock ruptured 00s NYC. It ripped gazes from navels. Conjured a rhythmic alchemy that defied category. Lifted the post-9/11 fog and made us dance again.

“If we’re going to die, we should probably just make a ton of shit that we like first.” A creative mandate par excellence. From it sprung Desperate Youth, Return To Cookie Mountain and Dear Science. Stone-cold indie canon. Later, the sandbox-kicking curveballs Nine Types of Light and Seeds.

Wolf Like Me. Staring At The Sun. DLZ. Halfway Home. A Method. Dancing Choose. Golden Age. That Letterman performance.

Formidable.

Tunde might just be the best frontman of his time. Still is. His lupine twists anchored by the heavenly BVs of Kyp Malone. Volcanic songs designed for live transmogrification. All the WD-40 in the world couldn’t unlock them.

After a hiatus – making movies, solo stuff, art, life – they’re back. Vital as ever. Playing the best shows of their career, no less.

Transmitting live from the Supernaturallest Amphitheatre on Earth, for the very first time.

TV On The Radio.

Howling together, Saturday Nite.

Oh, oh.

Tokyo Calling. Meredith Answering.

Some things must be seen to be believed. 

ATARASHII GAKKO! are that thing.

Blasting outta Japan like four pinballs in frenzy mode, Mizyu, Rin, Suzuka and Kanon turned up ready to rumble. Sailor uniform supreme leaders of a celestial forcefield, they chop up J-pop, rap and acidcore into something that is pure Gakko. Butoh theatre meets hyperreal rave. 

Their name translates as ‘New School’. Their mission: to crush mediocrity, embrace the way-out (and save you from burnout culture). To tiptoe along the fringes of reality, then stick out a gloved hand and drag us all along for the ride.

“In a time when only exemplar citizens are acknowledged, we strive to defy a narrow-minded society.”

Mainlining right into the somatosensory cortex of the Meredith massive.

Seishun Inoshishi! Go Wild! ATARASHII GAKKO!

A primetime party. Destined for the history books.

A supernatural return never smelled so sweet.

Eau de Perfume Genius XXXIII.

“One of the most fascinating and talented pop-minded songwriters of a generation.”

Mike Hadreas has a songbook so stacked it’d make Tolstoy weep. Sprawling, audacious, fearless – his 2010 debut arrived fully-formed. Yet with every PG record since, he’s sketched a different vibe, peeled off fresh skin. From the bioluminescent pop of Too Bright to the mid-life full body baroque of Set Your Heart On Fire, each chameleonic twist has fed the myth.

Don’t you know your queen
Whipped
Heaving

Funny online, funnier irl. Royal collabs with Aldous, Cate, Karen, Anna, Sharon. ‘Cause Genius knows Genius. 

“With nothing left to prove, he’s redoubled his efforts, and added another Everest to his catalogue”

Fronting a band stacked with Cali’s finest, Perfume Genius live shows have a rep. Expect shape-breaking, chair-dancing, bouquet-lashing, caked-in-candy-coloured-corporeal-catharsis. A Hadrean’s wall of sound. And boy can he move.

Or in the words of Karen O: “Fantastical, campy, high-brow, low-brow energies all at once”. 

Set our hearts on fire. Friday night.

Low rider, high vibes. 

Sun’s slipping. Flamingos flowing. Slap on something shiny and get down for a Supernatural special. 

An origin story as celestial as their ascent. Three supremely talented So Cal retrophiliacs bond over whiskey and old timers, meet up for a couple of garage jams, write a hit, play two gigs, get signed to Daptone. A roll call of primetime heartcrackers follow.

Will I See You Again, Easier Said Than Done, Love Is The Way, Can I Call You Rose? 

The masses captured by thee sweet melodies, thee dizzying grooves and a singer so charismatic he could part the Moorabool. Their latest, Got A Story To Tell, keeps rewiring classic doowop, goodtime R&B and Chicano soul into the kinda music that rattles bones right outta the ground.

SOS Saturday. 

Maximum levitation guaranteed.

Pa Salieu on debut. 

Coventry’s own mutant-rap renegade. Sui generis. 

Pa’s first mixtape landed like a tonne of gold bullion. Frontline was the breakout. A firestarter for the disaffected, it was the sound of Gambia transplanted to Britain 2020. Critics looked for a peg but came up short. Little bit grime, little bit drill, little bit Afrobeat, nothing but Pa. Who needs labels when you flex this hard? 

“I believe my genre is called Freedom of Speech.” 

Collabs with FKA Twigs, Ghetts, Mura Masa, Aitch, Disclosure. A stack of award noms. And a coupla memorable main events.

Stubborn to the bone, see me walk with chest
Feel that shlah, that’s the style and flex

His latest, Afrikan Alien, is swinging things in a whole new direction. Pa’s searing distillations of life in C-O-V are dolloped in big party prod, clipped with head-swivelling braggadocio and a flow like honey-whipped butter. The only way is up.

Sending the Energy into orbit.

More people, more party. Friday night.

Bringer of the Biggest Mood Ever.

HAAi times in the 3333.

From Karatha kid in a psych band to hotlining Hopkins in the UK, Teneil Throssell’s rise has been a moonshot manifest. A residency at Brixton institution Phonox was lesson number one in energy optimisation. HAAi building a dynamic rep that’d drop her into Europe’s most iconic clubs and stages. Psychedelic sets somersaulting over lacerated breakbeats, drum‘n’bass, techno. Always finding The Moment. 

HUMANiSE in UNiSON. Depths of Saturday Nite.

Like that kid with purple bangs who was always wagging art class to smoke menthols behind the bike shed, Bar Italia are cooler than you. One of the best guitar-ish bands to emerge from London in the last 10, Nina, Sam and Jezni have a rare kinda creative lockstep. Cloaked in mystery and a Dean Blunt co-sign, their abrupt three-part vocals and sleety shapeshifting indie rock buzzed brains during lockdown. When the world opened up, they followed through. Matador scooping them up for two back-to-backs. Tracey Denim and The Twits, in less than a year. And the big tunes keep coming.

LDN to MMF.

Come for the magic eye puzzle, stay for the song of the summer.

Return to Centaurus.

Beloved jazz-funk voyagers Mildlife cut a sound that struts like a private eye from Saturn. Krautrock workouts held down by demon grooves. Synth passages that stretch and bend like light. Disco-infused mantras, delivered with the cool nonchalance of players who can ski double-black diamonds down the nebula dust.

They first oozed into The Sup’ in 2018 for some late arvo magic. Now – after two big albums, club-ready remixes, even ARIAs – they’re back in for the Friday night party.

Enter the fusion. Let’s dance under that Magnificent Moon.

Amigos. Neapolitan. The Godfather. Dusty’s Norm Smiths. 

It’s a fact: good things come in threes. And Folk Bitch Trio are no exception.

Gracie, Jeanie and Heide. School mates from Northcote who’ve captured their hometown. “A little bit folk, a tiny bit alt-indie-rock” is how they put it. But FBT are more than a genre. They spin surreal and funny tales into the kinda confessionals that’d sit just beaut next to Gillian, Lucinda, Neil. Top shelf tunes stitched-up with harmonies that melt like a scoop of hokey pokey on nan’s butterscotch pud. That’s to say: songs that make you feel stuff.

“They’re like Boygenius if it was from the 1940s or something”, says Phoebe Bridgers, who probably knows a thing or two about a thing or two.

House Lights. God’s A Different Sword. The Actor. Analogue. Friendly Neighbor. It’s all been leading up to their debut, Now Would Be A Good Time, arriving just in time for Meredith 33. We should be so lucky.

Custom cut for the most golden of hours. Shivers. BYO pals to squeeze.

Legend, mate. 

On a hippie trail, head full of zombie

Colin Hay is having an un-be-lievable career. Climbed the absolute summit. A national treasure in at least three countries. 

Grew up in a music shop in Scotland, then moved to Melbourne. Wrote some songs that went to No. 1 worldwide and have had over a billion streams, won a Grammy, makes remarkable solo records, plays in Ringo Starr’s All Star Band, acts in movies and TV shows, has sold over 30 million records, is a funny bugger, still sings like nothing else, and tells great stories.

He was six foot four, and full of muscle

His band, Men At Work, fired the shot that started the 80s. All over MTV. An album topping the US charts for nearly 4 months. Biggest band in the world. Dabbled in some Yacht Rock. Closed the Sydney Olympics. Beyond iconic.

Here they come, those feelings again

Then some tougher times. Moved to Topanga Canyon, CA. Started playing solo shows. Made friends with a barman called Zach Braff, who became the star of Scrubs and then made Garden State, using Colin’s music in both. Later came a Netflix doco on his life. Then a Luude Down Under remix and another billion combined streams. 

You can hear a remarkable life in his remarkable voice. And see it in that bewdiful smile. 

First time in The Sup’. Best New Artist.

True or false?

I played piano before I talked.
I was born with perfect pitch.
I own six cats.
I got my start playing in the house band at a Jamaican Pentecostal church.
I was music director for Willow Smith.

Exactly where the art starts and the story ends for Saya Gray is anyone’s guess. And trying to work it out might just miss the point entirely. The Pro Hart of music, her ideas arrive like water balloons piffed from a passing car.

Kaleidoscopic splats of alt rock, blocky jazz pop and hypnagogic R&B, crafted into some of this decade’s most out-far, beloved weirdo-pop records. Her latest, SAYA, is an almost-trad tour-de-forcefield. A breakup record for the romantic misfits. 

“Alice in Wonderland who ate the magic cake and has gleefully taken over the entire house limb by limb.”

Down the rabbit hole. Friday.

It’s RONA. (with a dot). In the party slot. 

A logical choice for lantern-lit fun, as you’ll know if you’ve ever witnessed her behind the decks. The Kaytetye producer and selector seems to let the good feeling move through her as she plays. Splitting her time between Mparntwe in Central Australia and the clubs of Naarm, she’s a storyteller with the ones and twos. Raise It. Burn It. Show Me. 

Desert landscapes pulse inside melodic house bangers, trance euphoria and techno. Tales of resistance rise in the mix. Textures of Country tether to the wobbling haze of the moment. The bass drops. RONA. grins. The people dance.

Calling Out Your Name.

If you don’t know theirs, you know their voices. Athena, Teresa and LaRae are Detroit’s new First Ladies of House. A vocal trio sensation with a string of cult classics which have long been vibrating in The Sup’ and surrounds. Raising interstitials, bringing in the sunrise with JNETT, buttering up the Breakfast Spread. The lungs behind cuts from Andrés, Amp Fiddler, Waajeed, Moodymann, and their own growing catalogue. A new great in the line of Motor City vocal ensembles.

The Dames, here in the flesh. Vox x 3 x 3333. Saturday afternoon Glory.

Heaven sent.

“Omar Souleyman just wants you to have a good time” 

The dabke-techno king’s last dip in The Sup’ was so spicy Aunty’s still wringing the sweat out of her woollies. A helluva lot has gone down since.

From prolific Syrian wedding singer to international man of dabke, Souleyman’s rise has been steep and wild. After alchemising with Four Tet at Meredith 2012 (check out that Friday night), the pair teamed up on Wenu Wenu. A molten debut (if you don’t count the 500 live records that preceded it). “So visceral, thrilling and intense as to make the mysterious matter of earthly borders seem hardly worth the time to contemplate,” they said.

Fleeing Syria for Turkey, then Turkey for Iraq, amid the unrest he’s kept doing what he loves. Team-ups with Bjork. Gorillaz. Gilles Peterson. Modeselektor. Most recently, Ebril, a thumping love letter to his adopted hometown.

Omar Souleyman is back for 33 with one non-negotiable: No standing. Only dancing.

Saturday arvo dabke disco.

A blast from the present. This shit-hot Melbourne band write songs that sound like Johnny Marr and Julian Casablancas got in a bar room brawl, then hugged it out over a pint. Music made for first-time heartbreak and 4am kitchen dancefloors. Sharp edges, soft insides. Their shows already selling out faster than 6pm espresso martinis at Eric’s Terrace. If you haven’t caught Paris is Gone or 2010 on the wireless, you probably need to give that true crime podcast a rest. The international tours are stacking up. Gigs with The Kills, Sorry, and back-handed compliments from Anton Newcombe.

Stick the Camry in fourth gear. Satdee.

Sam Austins is your new obsession. A lane-swerving visionary whose grind turned to viral gold with Seasons. Willed into orbit by millions, it’s a perfect 2:37 capsule of his kinetic alt-pop. 00s r’n’b dipped in ghetto-tech and sprinkled with a bit of Prince-ly magic. Impossible to pin down, except for one ingredient: “Detroit is in everything I do”. Austins’ hometown is the through line. Wriggling in, radiating out, Motor City is his sonic atmosphere. His raison d’être. Hyped by Pusha T, Vince Staples and teetering right out on the verge. Turn up while there’s still a Next ahead of Big Thing.

Full body energy transference.

Footwork originator RP Boo is down from Chicago. Expect dancefloor divots at 160 beats per minute. High hat helicopters slicing into Roland R-70 basslines. Stuttering snares trampolining over sub-bass triplets. Gleefully glitched hip-hop swinging from cuckoo clocks and swan diving into the mix. A possible cameo from Phil Collins. Whatever gets the body locked and loose.

RP Boo godfathered a genre back in the 90s when he figured you could take two seconds of an Ol’ Dirty Bastard sample. Loop it. Speed it up. Then feed it through a drum machine until hearts race and limbs go elastic. He was coming at it from the perspective of a house party DJ and a dancer. Someone committed to the thrill of seeing partygoers form circles around whoever’s going hardest. It’s three decades later and we still either bow down or keep up.

Friday night with Boo.

Stretch into the day like petals reaching for rays.

Florist make indie folk that lets the daydreaming world soak in. Led by songwriter and ambient artist, Emily Sprague, the New Yorkers are bringing their full band to our Supernatural brunch. After a period of solitude, their new music is inspired by muggy porch jams, surrounded by crickets and thumping rain. Emily builds beautiful lattice-works of acoustic guitar, while New Age minimalism blooms and crackles from the edges. She sighs about colliding dreams. Mortality, meltiness and magic in the mundane. Red birds in the trees and aliens in the deep.

Osmosis awaits, Sunday. Make a Jellywish.

Paradistas rejoice! As dawn breaks on the night-long dance, Wax’o are here to show you the sunrise. From shadow lands to Promised, they’ll take you anywhere, with exquisite touch. A duo always on the wavelength, like a pair of Pobblebonks in concerto.

Simon TK and Edd Fisher are a decade deep into Wax’o Paradiso, and all that orbits it. The parties, the label, the radio shows, the cultivation of community – their local legend papers have long been stamped. They’re back for another Bushland Rapture. With a hint of mint in the air, or could that be durian? A cosmic concertina ride, at the mischief hour.

Wax’o Paradiso with the last ribbit.

The Mood Hut is open. Let yourself in.

The Vancouver-via-Sydney DJ, producer and Mood Hut label co-founder is back on our shores, and this time he’s beckoning with a full band. As one half of Pender Street Steppers, Jack J is known for his sumptuous deep house sets. As a solo artist he feeds his dance music prowess through a spectral haze of new wave, synth pop, and dub-smudged indie. His latest, Blue Desert, is a dusky noir of a record. Like yacht rock pulled by a Pillow of Winds. Played live, the music is loose and physical. It glides as it digs through hallucinogenic hooks and downtempo grooves. Shades on.

The most chill band from Arnhem Land. Drifting Clouds is Yolngu musician Terry Guyula. A lover of infectious 80s grooves and dreamy sax solos. His first ever song, Bawuypawuy, is an all time debut. It blends all that misty energy with millennia old Songline. Sung in his first language Liyawulma’mirr-Djambarrpuyngu, it tells the story of the sea, waves and currents of Gupawupa. 

Transcendent.

Music 4 Weirdos. A motto to live by. It’s made DSUP one of this town’s most beloved and Henry Rollins a mad fan. The brainchild of Dougal Shaw aka The Doc, this ragtag bunch of general practitioners have birthed a record a year since they started. More lifestyle than band, it’s music as a constant, as comfort, as catharsis. Post-punk, art-rock, new wave, synth-soup, proto-fuzz. DSUP keep spinning the wheel and hitching their britches wherever the journey takes them. It all makes sense once you see ‘em live. Trust the process. 

Friday first-on. Doctor’s orders.

After a raincheck last year, the Sunday morning hymnal is on. 

“A choir like no other in the world”

The Central Australian Aboriginal Women’s Choir sings sacred music in the Western Arrarnta and Pitjantjatjara languages. Their performance tells a remarkable story of over 100 years of continuous choral tradition in remote Central Australian Aboriginal communities.

In the late 1800s German Lutherans brought hymns to the desert. Observing the use of song to pass on knowledge and wisdom, under the guidance of the Arrarnta people, 53 chorales were translated into Language and a wholly unique music was born. Ancient European melodies with the cadences of Language from the world’s oldest living culture.

The songs took on a life of their own, spreading hundreds of kilometres from the Red Centre. Today, the choir is made up of 20-something core members, the eldest in their 70-somethings, from six remote communities.

These are the song keepers.

Mouseatouille been stewin’. Starting as a two person high school band, Harry Green and Spencer Noonan’s outfit soon grew to include anyone they could convince to pick up an instrument and play. Woodwind, brass, tubular bells, hand claps – their 2019 double album features more than 25 performers. Slimming down to nine members for their latest sitting, they remain centred around the comfort of numbers. The orchestral reassurance that a friend has your back, that someone is always playing along with you. 

Their latest album, DJ Set, reaches touching new heights, retaining their high school spirit and collective love. Care and precision in balance with the spontaneity of hanging out – you can almost hear the friends’ garages, share-house kitchens or parents’ lounge rooms it was recorded in. It follows a tour with recent Sup’sters Black Country, New Road. 

Brunch service, Saturday.

Rocket fuel for the astral riders. Like stardust sucked into a blackhole, Brown Spirits are on a cosmic odyssey to the outer reaches of the mind. A place where matter is merely energy condensed to a slow vibration, we are all one consciousness experiencing itself subjectively, there is no such thing as death, life is only a dream, and we are the imagination of ourselves. This trio of Coburgian freakbeats have been busy dusting their celestial jazz and motorik funk into every corner of the globe. First Oz act to ever sign to Soul Jazz Records. Flipping wah and moog into brainstems and reigniting the people’s love of music that’s more 9-minute voyage than 30-second dance trend. Cosmic Seeds. Solitary Transmissions.

It’s finally time for Supernatural touchdown, Friday.

Those magnificent folks in their almost-flying machine.

Now over 125 years old, and a popular fixture at Meredith since 2005.

These purveyors of airborne liquid gold usually start with a march through the campgrounds to help everyone polish away the previous night’s excesses, before moving onto the stage and romping through some classic hits. They aim to get bodies moving and warm you up for what is to follow.

Their origins can be traced to a band formed in Ballarat by Thomas Bulch, who had arrived from England with a group of his musician friends in 1885 at the age of 22. Bulch became a leader in the local banding scene, creating ‘Bulch’s Model Brass Band’, which was renamed The Ballarat City Brass Band in October 1900.

The CoBMBB has been a staple at Meredith for many years now, and they reckon it’s one of their favourite gigs on the calendar.

I’m giving you acid fantasy
I’m giving you the third day at Meredith
And the colours start to bleed

Aunty was tickled pink with this nod, cheering on Lazy Susan all the way to her crowning as winner of RuPaul’s Drag Race Down Under last year. The Melbourne-based drag artist and filmmaker is known for her sharp wit, surreal humour, and offbeat glamour. She blends camp and horror in her performances, two essential elements of any Meredith Gift. 

Once we’ve all had a few spins around the proverbial Susan come Sunday, what better hands to be in. Your Gift MC for Thirty-Three.