Senor Coconut, Holly Herndon and Wolf Eyes to headline return of Unsound Adelaide

The main music program, featuring acts such as Wolf Eyes, Holly Herndon and Pharmakon, will be held at Thebarton Theatre from Friday, November 17 to Sunday, November 19 while club nights will follow the Friday and Saturday Thebarton Theatre shows at Fowler’s Live until the early hours of the morning with artists and DJs including DJ Richard and Errorsmith.

An opening party will kick off the festival on Thursday, November 16 at the Botanic Gardens’ Bicentennial Conservatory, which is also the venue for Rainforest Spiritual Enslavement’s sound installation, while the talks program, presented by UniSA’s Hawke Centre, is yet to be announced.

The standalone festival, which former Adelaide Festival artistic director David Sefton introduced as a mini festival as part of his debut Adelaide Festival in 2013, will feature two world premieres, 15 Australian premieres and 13 performances that are Australian exclusives. Sefton and his company Random Harvest Productions present Unsound Adelaide with the festival’s parent company, Unsound, based in Poland, and Insite Arts. Unsound began in Krakow 15 years ago and now holds festivals in New York, Toronto and London.

With a music mix of electronic, experimental jazz, noise, drone and Latino, Sefton believes Unsound Adelaide 2017 features the strongest artistic line-up of the five Adelaide festivals.

“I’m really pleased with the line-up, I think we’ve got a really great list,” Sefton tells The Adelaide Review. “All the [Unsound] line-ups have been quite strong, but in terms of what we’ve managed for this, it’s probably the strongest of the five.”

Unsound features the first Australian live appearance of Uwe Schmidt’s (Atom TM) eight-piece popular Latino band Senor Coconut, which reinterprets music by artists such as Kraftwerk, Michael Jackson and Sade, and the world premiere of Chris Abrahams’ (The Necks) new outfit Ambarchi / Abrahams / Avenaim. Other impressive gets include the experimental noise band Wolf Eyes, avant-garde American electronic producer Holly Herndon and Margaret Chardiet’s noise project Pharmakon.

Unsound Adelaide 2017 lineup

Thursday, November 16
Opening Party, The Bicentennial Conservatory, Adelaide Botanic Gardens:
Chris Watson (UK)
Leyland Kirby (UK)
Rainforest Spiritual Enslavement (US)

Friday, November 17
Thebarton Theatre
7pm – Robin Fox presents: Euclidian Drone (AU)
8pm – Pharmakon (US)
9pm – Wolf Eyes (US)

Fowler’s Live
10pm – Club Sync presents: Sacrifices b2b Bby Angel b2b Rosa Maria (AU)
11.30pm – Amnesia Scanner (FI)
12.30am – Bill Kouligas (GR)
2am – Aurora Halal (US)

Saturday, November 18
Thebarton Theatre
7pm – Kara-Lis Coverdale (CAN)
8pm – Lexachast (Bill Kouligas X Amnesia Scanner) (GR/FIN/DE)
9pm – Holly Herndon (US)
10pm – Porter Ricks (DE)

Fowler’s Live
11pm – CORIN (AU)
12am – Varg (SE)
1am – Errorsmith (DE)
2am – DJ Richard (US)

Sunday, November 19
Thebarton Theatre
7pm – Ambarchi / Abrahams / Avenaim (AU)
8pm – N.M.O. (NO/PT)
9pm – Señor Coconut (DE/CI)

Unsound Adelaide
Thursday, November 16 to Sunday, November 19
Various venues
unsoundadelaide.com