What's the Sleepless Festival in Footscray? It's all a bit ambiguous and presumably a bit of a headache for the marketing department. I know it has live music, art installations and some painting and art workshops all with some kind of underlying theme. But what's it all about is anyones guess. Still I am plenty happy for a festival to be held at this time of year and for those that make the effort definitely rewarding.
Anyway we ventured out on Saturday evening to see two quite different live music performances. One a punk semi grunge live music performance at Footscray Records. And the other a quite contemplative in comparison performance by QiQi on the 21-string Chinese zither. Anyway music from quite different ends of the spectrum and both satisfying in totally different ways.
The punk music by Carpal Tunnel was an endearing performance with great musicianship and interplay between the musicians. The vocals could have perhaps been a bit louder in the mix but the lead singer definitely gave his all and some of the lyrics I heard were definitely interesting and definitely represented the voice of the younger generation. I could hear hints of grunge at times and even early 'Buffalo Tom'. Anyway I definitely enjoyed them and so did those who ventured out to see them.
QiQi on the other hand was endearing with her youthful enthusiasm (she's only 16). The traditional Chinese instrument and songs made for a totally different experience that was somewhat relaxing. QiQi related the songs meanings, her accompanying imagination to what the songs meant to her as well as well as her reflections added to the experience. The few songs where she added a backing track added to the experience as she was able to make a few more contemporary sounding songs to keep things interesting.
All up a nice entertaining evening although a few more patrons would have been nice to add to the atmosphere.