Bands are playing and drinks are flowing but this is less of a gig and more a summit of like minds as creative collective Debaser celebrates both its second birthday and the launch of its excellent 2024 photo-and-interview book.
The book talks to and about a huge range of people they’ve found interesting, from bands to visual artists to promoters to technologists (full disclosure: this includes – for reasons that can’t possibly make any sense – me). It’s more an event than a gig, more a chemical reaction resulting from complementary elements than a separate set of disconnected sets.
Upstairs there’s poetry, downstairs there’s live music, out in the garden there are DJs, and everywhere you look there’s a young, fearsomely creative looking type, animatedly connecting with old and new friends. It feels more like a small festival than anything else – it’s a hell of a party, and it’s a lot.
As an aside, it’s worth mentioning a lot of this is down to the venue. The Lord Gladstone may come off raggedy and a bit mad, but few venues – and I mean anywhere – know what they’re both playing at and playing to as well as this one. It’s both a blank canvas for people to play with and in, but is also a guiding star, a space that knows what we need and helps us all create it. It’s a gem of a venue, and we should protect and support it like it’s our own blood.
Anyway – if the aim was to make an event out of the book, it’d almost have to look and sound like this. Meanwhile, if you had to pick an event that would represent a solid percentage of Sydney’s cutting-edge creators, you’d be a fool to think there’d be many others better than this one.
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