SOFT CENTRE | CRESCENDOLL x CLUB CHROME
Crowned ‘Music Event of the Year’ at the FBI Radio SMAC Awards in 2017 and 2018, SOFT CENTRE is back for its newest installation across Carriageworks on June 4th. A frontier of new sound, art, and digital media, SOFT CENTRE is the pulse of radical experimentalism, cross-disciplinary collaboration, and the future of art.
This year, expect to see a smorgasbord of international and local talent — spanning live AV performance, light installation, and large-scale ambient compositions that defy genre and distort worlds. It was a herculean effort to select only a handful. Underneath are the three acts I’ve cherry picked that offer a little preview to the sheer magnitude of what’s to come.
In the run-up to its Carriageworks takeover, I interviewed a cut of SOFT CENTRE’s hall of fame, and leapt at the chance to profile two Sydney scene stalwarts. Emma, familiar as Crescendoll, is a force I’ve had the pleasure to witness. They were joined by Club Chrome, a QTPOC Dance Collective represented by Linh and Cilla.
Where there’s a dance floor, there’s momentum. Emma Bastable, who had initially entered the creative fold through dance, is looking to foster the link between live music and performance. Atmospheric cultivation, hyperpop-laden sounds, the percussive pull of a Portuguese drum — these are all moulded around the Gamilaraay creative’s practice.
Crescendoll: “So often as a DJ I only get to show one side of who I am, despite the fact that my tastes are very eclectic and constantly changing. It's rare during a set I get to showcase the different sides to me. One thing about DJing is that it's a really individualistic thing. It’s two way – you and the audience — but for the most part I just rock up and take people on a journey of my latest fascination. With DJ gigs these days, I’m not looking to go overseas, or do it for the sake of doing it. I’m more interested in doing things differently, locally, like collaboration.”
But really, the showcase will be a collaboration within a collaboration. Emma traces her inspiration genealogically to raves in Marrickville; tinned sardine-packed warehouses that were largely ungoverned in spirit. No security, all BYO — a community dense regulation of care that deviated from traditional institutions. It was there that she became drawn to ambient soundscapes — spoken word, experimental tracks without brevity.
That, and dabbling in the PC music-verse has proved to be particularly resonant for the birth of Crescendoll’s trademark sound. Emma cites DJ Plead and Charli XCX as their influences: both played pivotal roles as entry points into other spheres. Plead’s homage to his Lebanese roots in the sets he winds together and Charli swaying Emma from their indie rock beginnings are only a componential fraction of what can take place in a Crescendoll set. The mix we will get to witness at Soft Centre will follow the same trajectory. Expect to journey through aural drum sections, a mishmash of hyperpop and techno, and drifting ambient sound.
Dancers Linh and Cilla will perform in tandem with the 90 minute set.
During a rehearsal session, I listened to the three women— not one really wanted to offer singular ideas about themselves in relation to the collective. I had come with the intent to harvest. I was looking for narratives, the set-up, inclinations of the artists and the takeovers they were poised to bring to the fore. Did the core of who they are seemed central to the act they aimed to put on?
Then one of the girls put it this way: “Pole is one apparatus - but the heels are the second apparatus. And when I’m dancing with you,”—for effect, she nudges the other with the ball of her foot—“there are new ways and pathways I can move differently. It’s like we’re one being. We’re making shapes with both of our bodies into one shape.”
At a cellular level, Club Chrome is about exchange. Equilateral footing in an art trade that has long placed distance between its burgeoning popularity and its roots as a juncture of sex work. It’s not about pole as an act. Club Chrome, and the people who run it are invested in the collative fruit of showcasing pole, especially from bodies that otherwise may not have had chances to gleam. Not unlike the chrome finish of those very terminals bridging movement without restraint.
Club Chrome sources inspiration from other spheres like theirs: historically sidelined, BIPOC and queer sex workers who all hail from Australia’s multicultural and migrant past and present. The premise and focus has always been the same; to educate and provide bosom support both within the art form and the networks that bolster the underrepresented who take part in it. The coalitive nature is deliberate. Club Chrome operates as a skill-sharer — and performing in spaces that are normally delineated by convention, race, and class continues its legacy of education and resource pooling.
In an infinitesimal, ‘Giving Tree’ vein, Club Chrome is restoring the practice with its roots. But don’t be fooled; the twining extends past the pole. When asked whether structured routines were a part of their rehearsals, the girls were blithe — ““On the pole, what we execute is based on how we feel on the day — what we are, what we’re wearing. But doubles improvisation is definitely a new challenge.”
Within each outlet of co-optive creation, another nesting doll is unearthed, “improvisation, as a thing from strip clubs, makes you more engaged with the audience as it's kind of a reflection from that. It makes sense for the music to be live as well.”
The synchronisation of Crescendoll and Club Chrome will take place on the 4th of June, dressed in custom outfits by Diasphora and face by Bonnie Huang. Don’t forget to be there.
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Written by Karen Leong, with perspectives from Crescendoll + Club Chrome, captured and styled by Yuzhen Wang
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