Venue Spotlight: Miscellania is proof that 'against the grain' works

The COVID-19 pandemic was, for so many, an adjustment on the expectations we had of our own lives. Countless lost their jobs, we lost the ability to socialise, businesses closed, career trajectories changed forevermore, and in some of the most unfortunate circumstances, people lost their lives.

Generations from now, it may be impossible to describe the simultaneous feeling of unity and distance that dominated our day to day lives.

For those of us who shared the insatiable desire to dance, nightlife, festivals and clubbing felt like they may never actually come back. For me, and many others though, there was a guiding light that emerged while many of us were still stuck living even more vicariously through our phones than usual.

Naarm/Melbourne’s blossoming underground sweetheart Miscellania felt like it was made manifest by the desires of its city’s population. The club, boasting a 24 hour licence at launch, a rooftop bar and some of its city’s most in demand acts on repeat, didn’t quite feel real at first.

As Misc approaches its third birthday, celebrated with a 2-day event this coming weekend, founders Sasha Logan and Tim Fennell reflected on their journey with the venue so far.

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Miscellania’s location, a lofty two storey space right in the heart of Melbourne’s CBD, and with a rooftop no less, feels more at home in the industrial suburbs rather than in the high priced centre of an Australian capital city.

It became clear in speaking with Sasha and Tim, that in many ways, Misc’s birth was a very happy and convenient coincidence. “The the two of us and our co-director, Georgia… [saw that] all these venues were shutting and popping up for sale [due to COVID], and so it felt like a time when there was an opportunity that wasn’t going to come along in the same way again,” Tim explained.

Sasha and Tim were, albeit the serendipitous timing of the start of their Misc adventure, no strangers to Melbourne’s dance music scene. They’d both been responsible for running events in their cities for a decade before Misc had even started, with Sasha responsible for the running of Crazy Arms, and Tim with a wealth of experience at 24 Moons under 'Max Freak'. Experience aside, as Sasha and Tim would continue to tell me, little could prepare them for the demands of running the venue.

“Commercial clubs are stable, and so they’re not things that get flipped on the open market. It looked kind of shit in the pictures,” Tim laughed.

Misc is, to anyone who’s been, an effective and slightly obscure use of space. The room is like a New York style loft apartment, with a large stage and screen at the back, while the artist and sound system are generally set up by the windows, and a U shaped platform. There’s a mezzanine, and a rooftop bar hugged on all sides by RMIT and university accommodation. It almost demands you ask questions of it.

“Apparently it was an exchange student from China whose father bought the club for her as a job or something to do. It was only open for a period of a few weeks, maybe a couple of months before it got locked up,” Sasha explained.

Tim, much to my relief, also put the rumour to bed about the outrageously sized ‘JOIN THE DRUIDS’ neon sign sitting on the building next to them, in full view of the courtyard. “10 years ago The Druids Cafe was such an institution, they had full street trading.”

Sasha interjected, “It was a kind of mysterious gentleman’s club comparable to the stonemasons.”

The presence of this kind of absurdity in the very location of Misc feels strangely expected. Sasha and Tim continued to tell me that they still fantasise about bringing the druid sign to life again, but admitted that “it’s one of those crazy projects before you realise, you know, what the day to day of actually running a club was.”

It’s this haphazard and yet entirely purposeful approach to running the venue, its bookings and the reputation it garnered that has cemented Miscellania to many as somewhat of a living legend. The venue’s licence, originally 24 hours due to a convenient typo where there was “actually a seven when there was meant to be a one,” as Sasha told me, now felt all too regular in the grand scheme of the venue’s now three year history.

While this convenient typo sadly didn’t last, Miscellania, assisted by events like Dutty, Techworld, Animalia and more, quickly entered the virtual water cooler conversation of many club goers around the country. Outside of its early morning starts and star studded lineups, Misc’s reputation only cemented itself further, and disproved any ‘flash in the pan’ kind of thinking, by its commitment to diverse and often challenging curation.

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“One of the reasons Tim and I were drawn to working with each other is that we have really broad taste,” Sasha told me. “We try to curate things really heavily… there’s only so many times that one given group is going to come through the venue each month, but it’s also to stop ourselves from getting bored.”

This commitment to variety has drawn its fair share of parody or critique. Australian meme accounts are quick to label something overly experimental or pretentious as ‘Naarm-core’, and Misc is no different. What has become clear to me in my time at Miscellania however, and in talking with Tim and Sasha, is that this kind of reputational conversation is ultimately none of their concern.

“If we’re going to be there two to four nights a week, we want to make sure it’s something we want to be at,” Tim said proudly.

One of Miscellania’s flagship events, Absorb(ed), has run a total of three events, all of which have been held at Miscellania. With its dedicated and open-minded supporters, along with the sale of loud, borderline nonsensical t-shirts, Absorb has become a fitting embodiment of everything that Miscellania offers condensed into a marathon weekender.

Sasha runs Absorb(ed) with collaborator Kavil, and says that this dedication to experimental music is something that the growing team at Miscellania also holds very dear. “[We] have a really big passion for experimental music, left field dance music, bands, classical music, you know, all sorts. We try to bring that together, and find sweet spots in between to draw unassuming links. I think that’s what we’re trying to do with the venue to make it feel like a cohesive yet disparate musical story.”

“The intention behind opening the venue was to provide a space catering to a broad range of musical tastes, artistic disciplines and communities that have been traditionally pushed out of mainstream spaces,” Sasha shared. “We wanted to give musicians and promoters the ability to take risks and experiment, and provide a platform for music and art that isn’t always commercially viable elsewhere.”

“There's a rich history of weirdo spaces in this city (in the best way possible) which have acted in opposition to commercial clubs, but often these have been quite tenuous, either waiting to be developed or unable to sustain themselves financially, and are therefore continually closing down,” he continued. “Just before COVID, it felt like there weren't many options for spaces that felt comfortable and welcoming, particularly for the queer community as well as diaspora communities from around the world. We’re committed to working with a range of underrepresented communities and to give them a space to run their own events autonomously, which we feel actually results in outcomes where the members of those communities feel comfortable and supported in the venue.”

Experimentation is one of the core tenets of what Miscellania is. It might be easy to assume that there’s only one Misc because there’s only so much of a demand for that level of experimentation. When I posed this question to both Tim & Sasha however, Sasha was quick to share that he feels it’s a far more institutionalised issue.

“Young people can’t afford to open venues anymore,” he said very plainly. “We got lucky because of the timing, but in a broader sense there’s a reason why young people aren’t at the helm of music spaces. It’s just not a good investment, particularly when you’re interested in experimental music.”

While other, arguably “mainstream” venues operate in Sasha’s opinion with far less of a risk, there is clearly a desire and need for experimentation in the eyes of Naarm’s youth. Miscellania’s incredibly diverse programming has created a trusting community of regular attendees, many of whom no doubt have Miscellania as their first nightlife experience post-COVID-19.

This community on many nights consists of Naarm’s new generation of ‘club kids’, more online, more political and more curious than ever before. This collective of club kids is an easy picture to paint of the venue however, with these punters fitting into an intricate web of greater fans, each of whom’s love of the venue is bolstered by the other’s presence.

Variety, understanding, open-mindedness and an appreciation of music and its communities are what, for many, makes Misc an easy comparison with venues overseas.

READ: A CASE FOR NOT GOING TO EUROPE

“Morning sessions” and stickers obscuring phone cameras are easily traceable trends within broader dance music, but Tim and Sasha feel that Miscellania is uniquely Australian, though not due to any “cultural” influence.

“The restrictions that we have to work with in Australia, the legalities and the isolation to the Northern Hemisphere, it’s always going to be a pretty different thing. It's just what it is, and that makes it beautiful in so many ways,” Sasha reflected.

“There’s [also] so many people that are participating in the club scene. They’ve been here a while, and they’re probably here to stay. By and large that creates something quite unique, because I think relationships go a lot deeper and a lot longer. The isolation does prohibit a lot of artists from making and finding sustainable careers for themselves, but it also means that people are in it for arguably the right reasons. They’re doing it out of pure passion and community.”

Doing it for love, passion and “fun” are unfortunately not a replacement for a living. While Miscellania does appear to outwardly enjoy major success and popularity, like many with “creatively inclined” endeavours, Sasha and Tim are very open about the stress of running the venue.

“It feels exhausting,” Sasha said.

“There’s no way you’d do this if you didn’t enjoy and feel passionate about what we’re doing to an immense degree,” Tim added.

The current cost of living crisis has had a huge impact on the way all of us live our lives, but in the music community, venues are some of the hardest hit by changing consumer behaviours. “A few really bad Sundays could take us out,” Sasha said very solemnly.

Risks in curation and opening hours are what makes Misc what it is, but the two voiced a very genuine concern to me that many of their audience, and indeed the broader community, isn't truly aware of just how precariously placed our venues are. “People come to parties and see a full room and assume that It's sustainable and viable, but it's so far from the truth. It's so delicate,” Sasha said.

“There’s a reason why venues close so often.”

While the two would never want to encourage people to drink more or to go out more than people are willing to, they expressed a great desire for people to understand where their money is actually going. “If we started charging the amount of money on the door that would justify the cost of running events, then people wouldn’t pay. People would turn around and say “that’s too much””, Tim said.

In an individualistic world like this, it’s no surprise that our cultural institutions aren’t in the forefront of the minds of the masses, particularly when it comes time to pay the bill. While Tim and Sasha’s words were by no means unappreciative of where they are or the community they’ve built, it was surreal to hear the founders of one of the country’s most exciting and cult-followed venues admit that they’re still walking a knife’s edge.

With no signs of institutional change to allow room for more clubs to open, to operate more cheaply or for licences to be more easily granted or changed, it’s the responsibility of fans, punters and community to show up regularly for the institutions that keep our broader music culture alive.

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While this knowledge is very present in the running of Miscellania, the venue is still making major moves. International regard from countless visiting artists and brands like Dekmantel have proven that Misc’s formula is solid.

In the almost three years they’ve been active, Sasha, Tim and Georgia now have a solid and dedicated team of people helping them to realise Miscellania’s real potential. This includes Anuraag and DJ Mum, with Anuraag working on marketing, copywriting and grants, and both of them working on bookings and touring. Alex Mraz is now their production manager, and an entire team is dedicated solely to the running of the bar. Misc’s growing network not only outside the venue, but within it, is preparing it for a no doubt continued streak of incredible opportunities.

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In my experience, many interviews end with a feeling of nostalgia, reflection and generally, of slightly sombre appreciation. This conversation with Tim and Sasha did not follow that convention.

What I felt from them in this moment, as I did throughout the entirety of our conversation, was a sense of pace and drive that in so many ways had not yet been fully realised. While Miscellania is already so much to so many people, what was clear in the way we spoke was what they, their team and the people organising events at Misc understand to be its true potential.

In asking them for their favourite memories in Misc’s three years thus far, there was no shortage of incredible names on their lips. RP Boo, Dutty, Animalia, Steeplejack, Donk World, Casual Gabberz, Pleasure Planet, live shows with Omniveral Hum and NYE with HTRK to name just a few. A healthy dose of gossip for good measure, that “Troye Sivan [was allegedly caught] sneaking into Absorb(ed) and getting stuck on the rooftop, watching an avant-garde performance of people balancing on tables while gargling blocks of ice. That was one for the books,” Sasha laughed.

In the immediate future, Misc has excitedly very recently had its 1AM extended until 3AM on Friday nights to match Saturdays, with plans to open the rooftop bar as its own entity, with its own lineups. The touring arm of the business is set to expand too, with plans to create relationships with venues in Asia, and create a more cohesive touring environment for artists dipping below this side of the equator.

With so much already on their plates, you could be forgiven for thinking that Miscellania might count its blessings, even just for a moment.

Tim and Sasha were very clear however, that there’s no sign of slowing down just yet.

“We’ll be working our way towards a full week in the next few years,” Tim appeared to joke.

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Tickets for THREE YEARS OF MISC : BIRTHDAY WEEKENDER, taking place this weekend July 27-28, are still available.

Jack Colquhoun is the Managing Editor of Mixmag ANZ, find him on Instagram.