For the very first time, innit.

Original Golden Material. 

Yer listening to the streets
Lock down your aerial
Make yerself at home

When Has It Come To This?  landed in 2002, the world didn’t quite know what it was hearing. Slicing together dizzy garage beats with jungle and pop, a mouthy Brummie with a buzzcut turned UK music on its head.

Mike Skinner showed what it was like to be young and cocky in noughties Britain. With a Dickensian deftness he told us about kebab shop bust-ups, rude boys, raves, life on the dole, greasy spoon hangovers, Carl Jung and playing computer games. It was working class life in post-90s London, drawn with a bleak beauty.

Geezer poetry for the disaffected.

Point to the sky feel free
A sea of people all equal
Smiles in front and behind me
Swim in the deep blue sea
Cornfields sway lazily
All smiles, all easy

He followed it all up with a rap opera about a relationship gone bad. A rolled gold classic that rattled the heads of a whole generation of kids and reshaped popular music for the next decade.

“It raises the stakes to such an extent that it sounds literally unprecedented: there isn’t really any other album like this“

After some time out of regular circulation, writing books, throwing parties and enjoying high quality tea, the 45th generation Roman is back. A new album, hot collabs and a decade-in-the-making feature film to boot. 

Your head’s gettin’ blurrrrrrrred

Collars up.

Sunday nite.

“I make sure every drum beat has purpose, power and life force.”

Yussef Dayes is more than a drummer. He is a connector. A rarified force that has blasted through the UK’s galvanic jazz scene. Moving to his own beat and reawakening a generation to the spiritual power of rhythm.

Drumming by the age of four and developing his extraordinary technical prowess under the tutelage of Miles Davis’ drummer, Billy Cobham, Dayes’ talent was prodigious in scope and more vast than any coursebook.

In 2016 his collab alongside keyboardist Kamaal Williams, Black Focus, became the blueprint for music heads worldwide embroiled in a multicultural inner city junglism: from Brexit-era Britain to the jazz doof disciples Down Under. What Kinda Music with Tom Misch, which followed, was positively heavenly in its reach. He’s since worked with Sup’ rockers from Noname to Shabaka Hutchings.

But it’s on Black Classical Music that Yussef Dayes has truly carved it out. Across 19 tracks he buzzes on the limits of 70s funk, reggae and afrobeat, with contributions from some of music’s greatest minds, to ask the question: 

What is jazz?

Click in for an electric journey to the farthest edges of the Plains, where golden hues blister into cosmic dust and rhapsodic minds roam free. 

A moment awaits.

Yussef Dayes, summoning storms. Saturday night.

They’ve been on Aunty’s wishlist since day dot, and finally the planets have aligned.

From 0880 to 3333. Sweet Arnhem Land to the Supernatural Amphitheatre.

King Stingray in primetime. We couldn’t be more stoked.

Formed by childhood mates Yirrŋa Yunupiŋu and Roy Kellaway, the band’s existence felt somehow predestined. With family bloodlines to Yothu Yindi, growing up the pair saw firsthand the transformative power of music, eventually manifesting this legacy into their own vision: Yolŋu surf-rock.

King Stingray’s very first song, Hey Wanhaka, connected immediately, their infectious blend of rock and manikay captivating a whole new generation. And the hits just keep coming. Camp Dog. Lookin’ Out. Milkumana. Get Me Out. Life Goes On. It’s no wonder their debut album is considered an instant Australian classic.

Fanging all the way down the Central Arnhem Highway. 

Let’s Go. Sunday night.

A pioneer on Supernatural debut.

Few have shifted the needle quite like Jeff Mills. Laying the blueprint for techno in Underground Resistance, and later with his iconic Detroit-imprint, Axis, Mills is a master of his craft. A restless visionary and cultural icon. 

With Tomorrow Comes The Harvest he has manifested something truly levitational. 

First conceived with the late Afrobeat legend Tony Allen and keyboardist Jean-Phi Dary, the intention of this star-crossed collab was crystal: Transcend genre through improvisation. Explore the unknown. Lift-off.

“We’re exhausting feelings through sound. There are no mistakes or errors, just honesty.”

Following Allen’s passing in 2020, Mills lent into the spirit of this creation, expanding and resetting. Tabla virtuoso Prabhu Edouard entered the fold. A new alchemy emerging from music’s infinite frontier.

This is gonna be a one-of-a-kind, one-off, once-in-a-lifetime kinda thing.

Party hour. Sunday.

Post-punk’s most captivating band of the moment, with one helluva story to boot.

In five short years Black Country, New Road have written two critically acclaimed albums, farewelled a lead singer, buried their songbook, and regrouped to write an entirely new set of music just as compelling as their early work. 

BC,NR laid bare their bewildering ambition on back-to-back hits For The First Time and Ants From Up There. Creating a musical canvas awash with angular riffs, dizzying melodies and zig-zagging crescendos, these art-rockers inspired a truly unique fanaticism, their magnetic and tangled live performances likened to a kind of indie-rock orchestra, spooling out sounds and ideas. Movements and folklore.

Live at Bush Hall unveiled the new New Road. Maintaining that infectiously wild spirit, it is a masterstroke in songwriting, the freshly-minted six-piece sharing vocal duties and kicking off their exhilarating second act.

“Look at what we did together!
BC,NR friends forever!”

Loosen your laces, Sunday.

Sunday is for Cymande.

Perhaps the most seminal and sampled band in British funk.

This Caribbean-born group (pronounced sih-mahn-day) formed in South London with a peace-loving attitude and an ability to jam on a reggae and calypso-infused sound that no one had heard. It was funk and soul that could come alive with Rastafarian chants, then go winding down jazz journeys before exploding with psych rock. It could make you dance or leave you looking skywards, making shapes from the clouds.

Dove. Brothers On The Slide. Bra. Getting It Back.

They broke up in 1975, facing barriers in a British music industry largely ignoring their homegrown Black talent. But the Cymande groove was too buoyant to stay dormant. By the 80s their records had been discovered at New York discos. They were lighting up London’s rare groove scene and providing building blocks for house and garage. Grandmaster Flash and Jazzy Jay were dropping them at block parties. The Sugarhill Gang, and hip hop pioneers like De La Soul and Gang Starr were sampling them. Then it was Wu Tang Clan and The Fugees.

Now they’re back to play soul music that lights the soul of  music.

A rare treat, anywhere in the world.

Right here, for the first time. Cymande with The Message.

Quan, Ben & Peter. Exuberant polymaths. Mashed-up magicians. Real Units. Fun Fun & FUNner. 

Three decades in, you need two hands to count their albums, recorded everywhere from the jungle canopy outskirts of Bangkok, to a condemned Fortitude Valley warehouse, to a glass panopticon in Fed Square, to Andy Gill’s lounge room. Spawning hits Polyester Girl, Kong Foo Sing, Black Bugs, ! (The Song Formerly Known As), Fat Cop, I Like Your Old Stuff Better Than Your New Stuff, Bongzilla, Everyday Formula, Blubber Boy…

Odd Rock Royalty, for the first time at Golden Plains. Twelve years since they last licked our Sup’-hole. In ripping nick, as energised as ever.

Regurgitator.

Saturday Nite at Sixteen.

Electro-pop from Ghent = dancefloor, sent. 

Charlotte Adigéry & Bolis Pupul balance wit with groove, sarcasm with fragility, and abstract melody with a liquid funk. Fellow Belgians, Soulwax co-produced their debut LP, Topical Dancer. It’s music that riffs off Tom Tom Club beats, thumbs its nose at small-mindedness, and makes jokes in Esperanto.

They’re the kind of act who can cook a literal list of dance music clichés into something hot off the stove. Then twist the first experience of a wolf whistle into a disco-punk track that struts past its own self-consciousness (while wearing a nacho-stained bra). Live, they tweak up the bpm and bring the heat. As they explain on one of their industrial stompers, Mantra, the strategy is simple: thank the fears and say goodbye.

Let it go
Your body knows what to do

Zamrock icons.

1970s Zambia was a heady place. The music of the Rolling Stones, James Brown and Black Sabbath fuelled the youth in the halcyon glow of post-colonial independence. Bubbling out of this melting pot came WITCH. Fusing psych-rock, funk and garage-pop with African rhythms, Zamrock was born. 

Pioneering this new sound, WITCH’s wild seven-hour live shows became the stuff of legend, sparking a Zamrock movement that exploded across much of the continent. Their debut LP, Introduction, was the blueprint for all that would follow.

At the turn of the decade the dissolution of the band came amid extraordinary political upheaval, and it wasn’t until their back-cat was reissued in 2012 that so much of the world truly clued-on to the legend.

Forty years on, led by Emmanuel ‘Jagari’ Chanda and Patrick Mwondela, WITCH return with the feverishly wicked Zango, threading together the past and present with sublime spirit, it includes features from Golden-alum and compatriot Sampa The Great.

Bringing an expanded band for their Down Under debut, “WITCH sound far more potent than ever before – heavier, groovier and far more psychedelic. Absolute sonic sorcery.”

The WITCHing hour awaits.

Certified legends of heavy.

Three decades deep, Boris continue to defy.

“The pure sounds and echoes that move your heart exist as something that surpasses a type of genre.”

Rising like a heaving tidal force back in ‘92, Atsuo, Takeshi and Wata have spent 30 albums showing us how much they don’t care for labels. Walls of ear-splitting noise, fermented drone, doom-y psych, J-pop, Ian Astbury, and even a Wham! cover. 

A Boris show is like taking a journey down the well. No plunge too sudden. No crevice too dark. Discovering exactly what is percolating at the bottom is always worth the ride.

The time to hesitate is through.

Sound the gong, Saturday night.

Out of the wilds, onto the Plains.

Wednesday arrive to a hero’s welcome. Asheville punk kids turned indie rock heavyweights, they bring with them five albums of scuzzy southern squall and country-dusted pop. A stamp collection of ragged outsider anthems built around the small town vignettes of Karly Hartzman, whose gothic world-building conjures resplendently bleak southeastern vistas dotted with Dollar Tree discount stores, never-ending nosebleeds and cough syrup black-outs. A songbook of curiosities for a curious generation. 

I can walk on water
I can raise the dead
We joined the exodus
Headed out from Dollywood

Their latest, Rat Saw God, layers all those beloved Wednesday pieces into something truly sublime. That twangy underbelly uplit by a wash of countrygaze and bright-eyed melodies. 

“Wednesday might end up as the greatest indie band of their generation.”

A golden debut under the big blue, Saturday arvo.

An advocate, an activist, a proud Mutti Mutti songman. From his days fronting Blackfire in the early 90s, through to his recent carpool Koorioki era – where he cruised Fitzroy’s dirty mile, yarning and singing with the likes of Archie Roach, Dan Sultan and Alice Skye – Uncle Kutcha has used music to connect cultures and generations.

His voice is like a life force. It guides you through searching stories of justice, heritage, and forgiveness while his band moves with him through jazz-infused roots, deep Bidgee Blu’s and soaring country balladry. 

Circling Time, Sunday. Go walk alongside.

Bloxham, Nolte, Wallace and Vager.

RVG return to the Nolan farm for a sunset special.

Seven years on from their mercurial Meredith debut, and off the back of their enormous third album – this is a band in very fine form.

Romy Vager’s songs are only growing in stature. Midnight Sun. That’s All. Tropic of Cancer. Photograph. A Quality of Mercy. Nothing Really Changes (with a Sleaford Mods remix to boot).

There’s tales of conspiracy-fuelled Brain Worms, funerals on Google Chrome tabs, and stepping on an ancient Tiktaalik fish while time-travelling and turning into a Squid.

I know what I’m like
And I know how I get
If you think I’m strange
You ain’t seen nothing yet

Saturday, last rays.

Find the right altitude and coat yourself in Stardust. The French Touch is touching down in The Sup’. 

Both pioneers in their own right, Alan Braxe and DJ Falcon are cousins who separately joined forces with Daft Punk’s Thomas Bangalter to produce era-defining hits as Stardust and Together in the 90s and noughts. Their music tends to go on an upwards cruise until, next thing you know, it’s burst through the skylight. Noah Lennox (aka Panda Bear) called them masters of finding “short, meaningful phases which hang over the whole track and just accrue power”. Noah linked up with B+F last year for their Step by Step EP. It was the first time the often-elusive cousins had officially collaborated on a release. A sun-drenched return, done for the love of it.

Ooh baby
I feel like
The music sounds better with…

Braxe + Falcon + You.

Baro Sura, a musical trailblazer, defies categorization with a sound that seamlessly merges the progressive and the nostalgic. Raised in Melbourne, Australia, his eclectic upbringing absorbed the rhythms of hip-hop, the soulful melodies of R&B, the rebellion of punk, and the avant-garde allure of alternative music, resulting in a genre-bending, deeply personal style.

Baro’s ascent in music began with a series of mixtapes and singles, catching the attention of local radio and music outlets – until the release of Just Problems You Need To Know that propelled him to widespread acclaim. An artistic zenith came with a remarkable collaboration with the late Mac Miller, as Baro was the sole feature on Circles, an experience that solidified his reputation as a fearless innovator. 

Ever ready to reinvent himself, Baro re-emerged from a hiatus with producer Silentjay. With singles like In Ur Eyes, Terrified and Goodmorning, the hot streak of this new evolution has been certified. 

Baro Sura & Silentjay, with the finest band of friends. Saturday arvo at Sixteen.

Do Mancunians have more fun? Anz leads a new wave of deejays from the home of twisted melons that suggests as much. 

Loos In Twos, her recent outing on Hessle Audio, continues to mount the case. Riffing on the links between electro, UKG, filter house, afrobeats, funk, jungle and more, Anz has fast become one of the most prolific and exciting producers and selectors in contemporary UK club music (and beyond). Her Spring/Summer Dubs mix series, featuring new all original productions every year, has got the heads vigorously nodding, as has her newly minted label, Otras Mitades. But the place to start would have to be All Hours, her ode to a PM-to-AM odyssey, featuring the underground pop hit of 2021, You Could Be.

Unravel in the Designated Zone. Late late Sunday night.

It takes a certain kind of beat-down rodeo clown to go toe-to-toe with John Daly’s version of Knockin’ on Heaven’s Door (which apparently includes an extra verse about golf). On his most recent single, MJ Lenderman just shrugs and saddles up.

He’s the guy who brings skuzzed-out guitar and a lackadaisical drawl to North Carolinian quintet, Wednesday (who are playing the arvo before). Solo, he’s a front-stoop philosopher. A man with a keen, glancing eye on the details whose music can be as fragile and sincere as it is wry and noisy. He can build a love song around a t-shirt kiosk at the airport or open an album with a conspiracy theory about the pizza that poisoned Michael Jordan. 

There are notes of Daniel Johnston, Drive-By Truckers, Dinosaur Jr, Crazy Horse-era Neil Young, and of course Bob Dylan-era John Daly. It’s all wrapped in an alt-country cacophony that staggers into surges of distortion and licks of pedal-steel.

Boat Songs with The Wind, Sunday.

A wizard wielding 45s. A savant with a 7-inch. Tokyo’s total technician on the Technics. DJ Koco has spent the last twenty or so years scouring Shimokita’s record stores, on a mission to release love from liquorice pies. He mixes soul, funk and classic hip hop with dusty Japanese gems and anything fresh that fits on a 45. 

A car accident left him blind in one eye when he was a kid, but the feel he’s got for juggling and scratching has become the stuff of legend. He does it with a feather-light touch and a spring in his step – a finesse that’s seen him DJ alongside absolute masters like Cut Chemist and Kenny Dope. Now he’s here for the late-afternoon sunshine slot, promising to keep things laidback, bouncy and Golden.

A Kiwi heart-wrencher and debauched art sketcher. An artist who writes what she means and never flinches. With songs that rush to the edge and look down, or land like punchlines at closing time on a Tuesday.

Over the last ten or so years, Sarah Mary Chadwick’s solo work has reached classic status. She’s given us a steady stream of raw self-portraits, backed by often devastatingly direct and lovely piano arrangements. On her latest album, Messages to God, it’s like she’s been getting on frenemy terms with her ennui – filling her music with swirls of flute, bursts of jaunty singalong energy, and searching moments of pure, human connection. Get down in the Sunday AM if you want to come commune.

Up front for Elsy.

As rapper and producer she has carved her own path, landing hard with debut Nilotic. Paying tribute to her heritage as a Kenyan Nilot, and steeped in the gospel and soul she absorbed growing up in Adelaide, Elsy’s joints dig deep into identity and culture. Atop boomy beats and wispy R&B she drops scintillating bars, showing off that prodigious ear for big bad hooks and a stunning lyrical prowess. 

River Nile with a flow that can never run out of course
Move with a unknown source
Kama kawa minakuja na force
Nataka tu round of applause

The horizon shines bright. Sunday arvo.

Bringing the party to The Sup’, with a scoop or two of SorBae: Soju Gang. 

An iconic and tenacious presence in Naarm’s nightlife scene, both on stage and off, Soju Gang is a DJ, multidisciplinary artist and savvy capricorn. She found notoriety as a promoter and host, before hopping behind the decks and showing her range as a stylistic chameleon, as intent on rocking the dancefloor, as on centring community and connection through music. Soju aims to draw every dancer into her sets, jumping and weaving through hits spanning RnB, hip hop, soul, house, techno, dancehall and club.

Saturday Nite, Soju squad assemble.

Harvey Norman can get fucked. This is the Split System you need on a hot Saturday. A band that formed in lockdown when members of Stiff Richards, No Zu, Bad//Dreems and Speed Week got all coiled-up with a proto-punk plan. Now they’re on the loose, skipping stones down drains, and demolishing venues with high voltage rock’n’roll.

Vol. 1 rips. Vol. 2 is on its way.

It’s all mean riffs, clean tones and raspy swagger. Heat it up and cool it down.

Four friends from Frankston, who holed up at Singing Bird Studio to make one of the strongest, catchiest local discs of the year. Running the gamut from new wave, to grungy alt-rock, to jangle pop, it coalesces effortlessly on Lush Life. Scuffed songs of longing, connection and escapism, loaded with wall-to-wall hooks – the tight unit led by Maisie Everett, last seen round these parts playing her final show with CLAMM at Meredith 30.

Sometimes you gotta take the hit
Push it out or suck it in
Take me to the lush life
Take me to the lush life

The fresh kicks of Belair. Gimme Gimme.

Riot grrrl by way of Ginsberg. A DIY dissident with a map all her own. 

Zine-maker, songwriter, punk rock poet: Sneaks thinks deep and makes music to match. Cutting her teeth in DCs underground, Eva Moolchan’s first solo flex arrived on cassette in 2014. Her sonic singularity caught the attention of Merge, and she’s been on an evolving creative tip ever since. Sharp bursts of hypnotic electro-punk and stuttering serpentine beats shapeshift with effortless ingenuity across six records, each a swaggering trove of metamorphic mood and metrical pace.

“Sneaks remains as singular – and sophisticated – as ever”

Setting the scene, Saturday.

A Sunday Service for the Midnight Massive.

Sunshine and her Disco Faith Choir bring a Joyful Noise unto The Sup’.
It’s satins, sequins and gospel house glory. 

Beginning in Melbourne in 2016, and helmed by one of the city’s most renowned DJs (particularly notorious in the Revolver cage), Sunshine sets out to unite her club sets and productions with the exalted voices of a lavish choir. From the disco inferno, an ode to dancefloor salvation – drawing inspiration from The Staple Sisters to Aretha to Floorplan. Their sets span original productions, house anthems, and Fleetwood Mac, in search of A Deeper Love.

Set Me Free, why don’t cha. And buckle up for The Ride.

The Slingers’ country-dusted indie gems have stuck like silly-putty to the hearts of their hometown.

Restlessly navigating music’s every nook and cranny, their songbook is as vast as it is moving. Never sitting in one place for too long, this is a band that just Goes With It.

Their debut record Sentimentalism is a tenderised delight. Motel pop awash with sepia-stained heartbreak and twin-share existential ennui.

Kind Hearts. This Time. Our Last Day In The Sun.

Soak it up, shake it out, scratch that itch.

It’s you and me, whiskey and tea, Sunday.

Soundtracking the Saturday night wee hours to the vast Animalia that gather: local star on the rise, Kia. 

With a keen ear for bass heavy rhythms, IDM and the deeper shades of techno and trance, and a bubbly presence behind the decks, Kia plays with the confidence and experience expected of a DJ with decades under their belt. 

Gliding through genres and emotions in exciting and often unexpected ways, Kia’s talent for weaving musical narratives has seen her construct revered mixes for Nous’klaer and Truants, and become a regular in booths across the globe, from De School to Miscellania to Sustain-Release. Not to mention the hot streak of releases on her label, Animalia, and its ambient offshoot, Cirrus. 

Fine tune your freakwencies.

No one whips a crowd like Mount Druitt’s Badeśt. 

Splish splash heavy rain
Ice drip on my fang
Buss down on the gang
See you watching my game
You and I are not the same

Vv Pete is dropping jaws with her next-gen strip club anthems and Bacardi Papi flexes. With flow so sharp it grinds, and beats so heavy they thunk – Vv is turning heads from Hot 97 to Helper Hut V7.

Jordan 1s in the air, late Saturday nite.

He may well be Sydney’s finest selector. And he’s heading down the Hume for a Golden sunrise.

Heavenly.

Ben Fester is a DJ, producer and tastemaker of the highest order. From his long-running Heavenly parties, FBi shows, wax-peddling at Darlinghurst’s Record Store, to his latest venture – an ethically-sauced pizza bar at Central Station. 

His productions have seen recent releases on Paper-Cuts, Butter Sessions, and Moonshoe – both solo, and as Unsolicited Joints, a project with his brother, known as Cousin (naturally).

But most of all, it’s his deejay sets that are spoken of in hushed reverential tones. From subterranean electronix to twisted house to whatever the home stretch calls for, the oven will be hot as Ben Fester closes out Sweet Sixteen.

Get down in your favourite listening position and hear the word on Wadawurrung Country. 

Uncle Barry tells stories of Dreamtime ancestral heroes and the nature all around us. From his perch in Gordon, with a view of Kirritt Barreet, he’s been collecting and interpreting these stories for years, the telling of them marking an important coming together for everyone.

Late morning, Sunday.

Yes, all on the one and only stage. Take a spot in the Amphitheatre and don’t move, until you can’t help but be moved.

No timetable clashes – you miss nothing unless you choose to.

Years of planning go into the shape of every LineUp so it is custom cut for all the various times of day and night, as well as those glorious in-between times.

Making the spaces between, the levitating points of Sixteen, are:

Tess Monaghan & Mia Richter
Steely Ann
Kasun
Lauren and Simon
Joey Lightbulb

Silence Wedge is an institution at the festival. Some years the Wedge goes for longer, some years for shorter. If this will be your first time at the festival, it is highly recommended that you don’t miss Silence Wedge. It happens in the early morning, at dawn or just before dawn.