Menu ▲

Melbourne Music Week 2014: The Innocuous Laneway Party at Somerset Place Laneway

Words by Scenewave Oz - Published on November 14, 2014

When you see the name Innocuous against a party you should do one thing… buy a ticket. The Melbourne dance get up are holding a Laneway Party as a part of the Melbourne Music Week and trust us, this isn’t one to miss.

A keen eye on throwing some of the best parties known down under is a gross understatement and with an ethos of simply good music, late nights,  and the occasional slow roast what else do you need or want in life?

Straight from the horses mouth, “‘Innocuous’ will host its inaugural event as part of Melbourne Music Week 2014 – an open-air day party designed to showcase our city’s diverse and talented independent dance music community. Located in the heart of the Melbourne CBD, the freshly revamped Somerset Place will play host to the block party style revelry – think palm trees, tunes, beers, and sunset. The performances won’t be your average DJ sets either; music will be sourced and performed by Melbourne DJ collectives as a throwback to the key ideologies and styles that have defined dance music today.”

To top things off there will Melbourne’s favourite record stores holding a record fair to sell to the masses their vinyls and most of all banging new music of all genres. The idea is to showcase our very best talent on the decks as you’ve only got to tune in on any radio station and you’ll definitely here something from this wonderful land.

We got a chance to speak to the team from Innocuous to gain an insight! (Details for tickets are at the bottom of this page)

Why will this party be so different?

For the most part our parties thus far have been at our houses. We’ve been lucky enough to have guys like Harvey Sutherland, Sleep D, North Pollard, Grant Camov and Clever Hands come down to spin for us in a variety of lounge rooms, but for this party we wanted to look outwards. Hence the laneway…haha. Considering how difficult it is to do anything in a public space these days, it’s nice to have the guys from Melbourne Music Week on board supporting the vision.

The divergence from our early ‘message’ came about because we saw a significant opportunity to celebrate Melbourne’s underground dance resurgence. All four members of Innocuous are a part of an electronic community that supports each other through its music- gigs, parties, buying records…it’s a support network that allows us to survive. After we’d decided to start the overall Innocuous project, our focus turned to demonstrating our appreciation of that culture. In essence, we thought it best to do that at Somerset Place.

We’ll have Melbourne based record stores slinging wax, locally produced food and drink, and DJ collectives booked for their musical passion rather than their promotional value. We want to showcase Melbourne’s thriving scene, in party format.

Your go to tune for 2014 to get any dance floor pumping?

Tough one…and very dependent on the setting. For the sake of blissy summer laneway vibes I think we’d have to go with the John Morales edit of ‘Hooked On Your Love’, originally produced by The Fantastic Aleems.

A word of advice for those hesitant on pressing play on attending?

Think tunes, sun, laneway, beers, burgers and records.

We couldn’t come up with six things we liked more than that, and are strong believers that they should be the primary focuses of any day. Having them all in one space will be a euphoric, potentially mind blowing experience.

Your collective is leading the way in promotion of Australia’s dance music. What is something that you see as the point of difference in our style?

I think the biggest difference is the shift in focus from ourselves to those around us. We’ve all grown up DJing for promoters who lacked ideals outside of financial reward, so we wanted to do it with a more utopian focus. Melbourne is blessed with a huge amount of cultural capital, so rather than ignoring that we decided to do embrace it. People are often so fixated on finding their point of difference that they forget about all the brilliant shit that’s already going on around them. We were so inspired by what other people were doing that we wanted to be a part of it- help those smaller than us, and gel with those bigger. It’s a testament to Melbourne that we’ve been given open ears by pretty much everyone.

All of the Innocuous parties have been entirely funded by our personal savings as well, so all we really care about at the end of the day is that the party is dope. That seems to keep it light hearted and override any social barriers within our audience.

This may be a silly question, but did LCD Soundsystem have any influence over your name?

Absolutely! James Murphy and the LCD Soundsystem project have both been massive sources of inspiration for us. It’s about everything to do with him and that time in New York in general- DFA, parties…all sorts of stuff. He created a community for his artists, and we want to do the same here in Melbourne. Our graphic designers actually used the connection as a source of inspiration when they designed our logo.

‘Get Innocuous’ is also on high rotation at our house parties.

What does the future in your eyes have for Australian dance music, and it’s style?

It’s certainly thriving at the moment. There will always be the commercial and the non commercial, but the incredible people behind Melbourne’s far reaching revolution are doing it just right. All of the crews playing at this party (and the tens more we were unable to book) have been doing it well for ages, and will continue to do so. The shift away from international headliners will continue to change as punters realise they don’t need to look any further than Melbourne for incredible electronic production. The multitude of people who are devoting themselves to music here will ensure that Melbourne continues to grow in stature across the rest of the dance music world.

If you were to pick an entrance track as a wrestler, what dance track would you choose?

Trav, being the wrestling nerd of the group decided to answer this one for all of us…Big Pig- Breakaway.
*NB. Liam still strongly disputes that Trav is the true ‘Innocuous wrestling aficionado’.

Lastly can you think of the top 5 reasons everyone should attend this event?

The six we mentioned earlier are definitely it, but if we had to remove one it would probably be the sun- we like dancing in the rain just as much.

 

WHEN: 21 November 2014

TIME: 16:00 – 02:00

VENUE: Somerset Place Laneway, Somerset Pl, Melbourne, VIC 3000, AUS

COST: $20 Laneway, $30 Deluxe

https://www.facebook.com/events/1486539704952763/

Comments are closed.