Archives: Events

As the sun dips, the party moves indoors for Leon Vynehall, All Night Long. Part of a new wave of vanguards expanding the possibilities of electronic music, Vynehall is celebrated for his depth, imagination, and forward-thinking approach. A true selector, he blurs genres, mixing house, techno, ambient and breakbeat, crafting a story that sweeps across the dancefloor. His set doesn’t just play music, it carries you, lifts you, and leaves you somewhere you didn’t know existed.

January 3 is built from everything that defines Summer Dance: community, rhythm, heat, and the freedom to show up exactly as you are. It’s a space to feel, to move, to lose yourself, and to find yourself all over again.

 On January 3, Summer Dance returns to the sun for the first party of the year. 

UK electronica duo Maribou State make their return to Sydney, and their debut on the courts, bringing a fresh DJ façade to the project we all know and love. Their set is melodic, emotional, and deeply human. There’s a rare magic in the way they channel sound, lifting, moving, and inspiring you all at once. This is Maribou State as you’ve never felt them before, something new, something alive, something quietly transformative. 

Joining them in the daytime is Close Counters, whose fusion of house, neo-soul, broken beat and disco has marked them as one of Australia’s most exciting dance acts. Their music is a celebration of groove and craft: sample-driven, colourful, and built to move your body and your mind. There’s a joy in their rhythm that refuses to sit still. 

Opening the afternoon is Bria, an Eora-based curator and radio voice who brings people together through sound. Her sets wander freely between bass, progressive house, breaks and Jersey rhythms, always held together by a sense of community, connection, and a subtle invitation to move together, as one. 

After six long years, cult-favourite band The Growlers return to Australia as part of their first global run since 2019—a highly anticipated revisit that fans old and new have been waiting for.

The 2026 global tour kicks off in Australia, where the band will perform across the East Coast with Melbourne’s very own The Grogans supporting.

Fronted by the compelling presence of Brooks Nielsen, The Growlers’ return opens a new chapter in a story rooted in Southern California underground mythology. The band built a devoted global fanbase by pioneering the “Beach Goth” aesthetic — a fluid mix of surf-garage-pop-punk — and became legendary for early club and warehouse tours aboard their now-mythic school bus “Lizzie,” much in the spirit of the Merry Pranksters’ Furthur.

The Growlers have made records with both Dan Auerbach and Julian Casablancas, and their studio evolution reached a high point with the Casablancas–produced album City Club alongside the earlier Chinese Fountain. And now, with longtime drummer Richard Gowen back in the fold, the chemistry that defined their best live shows has returned.

While The Growlers paused full touring in 2019, Brooks Nielsen kept the creative engine running. Over the past few years Nielsen has released five solo albums and played hundreds of shows worldwide. That prolific solo era recently concluded with two sold-out nights at the Hollywood Palladium on October 30 & 31, 2025, setting the stage for The Growlers’ return.

The band’s resurgence arrives with fresh music: the swaggering new singles “Feel My Funk” and “Crisis” deliver the familiar mix of groove and grit fans expect, and the recent Beach Goth Tape archival release shows they’re dialling in both nods to the past and bold moves ahead.

The Growlers are back — ready to celebrate the songs, the fans, and the legacy that’s brought them here.

30 plus years. 10 albums and rising. One just being together.  Pop goes the culture! Like a stun to the head it leaves one careering across the highway of a neverending invasion of cultural detritus… strewn across the landscape of your mind with blips and beeps and repetitive phases.

Forming late ‘93 in Brisbane, core members Quan Yeomans and Ben Ely set off on a malformed trajectory of numerous EPs and albums recorded in idiosyncratic scenarios: TU-PLANG (1996) in the jungle outskirts of Bangkok; the pixel obsessed 80s jolt of UNIT (1997) in a condemned Fortitude Valley warehouse; …ART (1999) in a sun soaked Byron Bay beachside house; EDUARDO & RODRIGUEZ WAGE WAR ON T-WRECKS (2001) amidst the red bricks and cigar smoke of Andy Gill’s (Gang of Four) London house studio; MISHMASH (2004) in Melbourne’s Federation Square glass panopticon studio for the disruptive Band in a Bubble reality pastiche; LOVE & PARANOIA (2007) in a bullet riddled studio in Rio de Janeiro under the looming arms of Corcovado with a gang of dueling Brazilian sound engineers; SUPERHAPPYFUNTIMESFRIENDS (2011) in Ben’s old Melbourne Northcote shopfront; DIRTY POP FANTASY (2013) in the upper levels of a Hong Kong skyscraper apartment; the digital meta-virus that is HEADROXX (2018) fabricated over the internet; the recent cultural coloniser that is INVADER (2024). The past has trekked them live across Australia, NZ, Japan, UK, Europe, USA, Asia, Middle East, as much as an incessant barrage of festivals (Big Day Out, Good Things, Meredith, Golden Plains, Mona Foma, Spring Loaded, Clokenflap, Reading, Fuji Rock, Groovin’ the Moo, The Falls etc); tours with Boredoms, Red Hot Chili Peppers, Helmet, The Melvins, Weezer and KISS. Always drawn to the odd they collaborated: contemporary dance/live music project ‘Rock Show’; puppetry on Raised by Wolves at the Melbourne Fringe; a self-written live soundtrack to Japanese film AKIRA at the Sydney Opera House; performed the debut Velvet Underground album inconjunction with Chinese collaborator Mindy Meng Wang on guzheng; and the riotous kid fun of the POGOGO SHOW! Latest expedition to the peak mountain of sounds – 2024 heard the invasive notions of INVADER… now joined by Sarah Lim on keytar/guitar.

More steps than one can wonder up a craggy trail of precarious independence lingering on the kindling embers of a bloated spectacle – capitalism sucks the culture out of life. All in the face of an industry fabricated in a vortex of froth and culture packed and canned for your homogenous convenience.

REGURGITATOR available here: https://www.valverecords.com.au/shop/