The Vision Behind Adelaide’s Newest Music Festival Tryp
Adelaide Festival’s Contemporary Music Curator Thorsten Hertog discusses all things Tryp, the festival’s new eclectic music program taking place over the opening weekend.
Words Emily Wilson // Image Elena Panouli
It is - according to the Adelaide Festival’s Contemporary Music Curator Thorsten Hertog - a big year of firsts for Adelaide. Hertog is enjoying his first year in the position of curator, Matthew Lutton is enjoying his first year in the position of Artistic Festival Director, and arguably, the city has never quite seen an event like the one they have both worked hard to organise: Tryp.
Over the phone, Hertog explains that Tryp is a program that he has “poured a lot of love into.”
It is a hard event - or series of events - to properly describe. “It’s really sort of a festival within the festival,” Hertog says.
Originally, Tryp was to entail three nights of experimental music at three of Adelaide’s most exciting venues - hence the name. “It has shifted to more of a diptych rather than a triptych, in the wake of all the controversy with the Adelaide Festival Writers’ Week.”
After calls to boycott the festival in protest over the sudden disinvitation of Dr. Randa Al Fattah, several local artists originally slated to perform withdrew, compressing the line-up. Now, Tryp will take place over two nights instead of three.
“There was an intention to chart this almost Dante-inspired journey from dark into light, from hell into paradise. Very DMT, acid trip-inspired. It’s an assault on the senses. The whole program has a very agnostic approach to genre, it’s very much more mood-based and journey-based. On one night you might see guitar music, club music and an audio-visual show, as well as a drone show by a noise artist. So it’s very eclectic, but there’s a throughline of heavy, brooding psychedelia.”
Taking up the mantle of Contemporary Music Curator appears to be exciting and artistically fulfilling, but the pressure is no doubt high.
“It’s a huge honour and privilege to be given that amount of responsibility,” Hertog says. He cites booking the 15,000-person opening concert in Elder Park as a huge moment in his career. “That’s definitely the biggest gig I’ve ever had to book, and I’m really glad we landed on a legacy act like PULP. Because the aim is to book something that has cross-generational appeal but still feels current and celebratory to mark the opening of the festival, so PULP ticked all of those boxes.”
Curating events such as the PULP concert and the Tryp program must be overwhelming.
“It’s an unwieldy process,” Hertog admits. “You have to start big picture, and then you just have to throw lots and lots of ideas at the wall.”
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Tryp I, at the Hindley Street Music Hall, will be an exploration of “brooding, abrasive” sounds. Tryp III will see Adelaide University Cloisters “transformed” by “bespoke design,” with the feel of a “midsummer night’s dream.” The two events will exhibit such exciting acts as Boris & Merzbow, Takkak Takkak, DJ Haram, DJ Rupture, and Barker, amongst others.
Hertog specifies, “I really wanted to champion the local independent music scene. I worked with my producer Lewis Goodran, who is a veteran promoter in Adelaide, to find local artists that we could fit into this framework.”
What stands out to him, then, about Adelaide’s local music scene?
“There’s a burgeoning grassroots scene. Well, burgeoning makes it sound like it’s a new thing - but from my understanding that’s always been there. There are amazing DIY venues like Ancient World creating space for the local club kids. There also a doof scene and people doing office raves, so it’s been really fun learning about that through Lewis, but also just going on my own internet wormholes and just adding ‘Adelaide’ as a tag on Discogs or Bandcamp and learning about the musical history of the place.”
He cites rock outfit The Superjesus and pop-star Sia as evidence of the fact Adelaide has “always been a very musical” place. “Amongst the Adelaide Writers’ Week stuff, a lot of the locals have pulled out of the Tryp program, so that intention isn’t maybe fully expressed in the final execution of it, but there are still some amazing local artists involved,” Hertog says.
“We called it Tryp partially because it was originally a triptych - three distinct events - but it’s also tongue-in-cheek. Like, trip - it’s supposed to be an excursion through many different sounds, and it also has this undercurrent of psychic activation. It’s supposed to be cerebral. The music’s very arresting, it demands your attention. It’s equal parts beautiful and horrifying. It’s like any interesting trip.”
In a statement posted to his personal Instagram account, Hertog recently addressed the Adelaide Festival Writers’ Week controversy, which he describes as having “laid bare a culture in crisis.” He calls Fatah’s removal “a deeply disturbing affront to freedom of expression” which dangerously conflated her Palestinian identity with the tragedy of the Bondi attacks, a conflation which he rejects “unequivocally.” He continues, “These crises consistently displace responsibility onto artists and arts workers, forcing them to make difficult choices between their livelihoods and their principles, whilst under intense public scrutiny.”
He adds, “Where accountability has been taken, I believe continued participation can also be an ethical response. In that spirit, Tryp continues in an updated form.”
Over the phone, he says, “It’s definitely our intention to just be forward-facing now, and put all of that behind us and talk about what’s exciting.”
He praises what he calls the impending “dramaturgy” of the Tryp program. “People are using the spaces in such interesting ways. I can’t wait to dance to it all.”
He laughs. “Bring earplugs, that’s all I’ll say.”
Tryp I takes place at Hindley Street Music Hall on Friday 27 March and Tryp III takes place at Adelaide Uni Cloisters on Saturday 28 March. Tickets for both events are on sale now at adelaidefestival.com.au.
