The Big Day Out Sideshows

Around the fringes of the BIG DAY OUT are institutional elements that make up as much of the magic of the annual music festival as the stars on the main stage. And in 2009, these include the return of the Silent Disco, some massive artworks by the acclaimed Australian war artist, George Gittoes, and of course Lilyworld, a place packed with characters who probably should be institutionalized.

Premiered at the BDO in 2006, the Silent Disco returns to the BIG DAY OUT to electrify disco dancers with their mixes of dance, hard house, punk, salsa, twenties swing, alternative, world, electro, hardstyle, gabber and Dixieland, all through the convenience of wireless headphones! In the Double Channel SILENT DISCO, which features new 2-channelled digital headphones, party people can choose from DJ OD & DJ Steven Guts OR the guest DJ at the time and have a good old fashion dance off!

Guest DJs include Dick "Magick" Johnson, D-Form, Manuel Bundy, Jimmy Christmas (D4/Luger Boa), Sounds of the Overground and Kingsland Vinyl Appreciation Society.

SPEAKER SCRIMS ARTWORK BY GEORGE GITTOES: The BIG DAY OUT is excited to host GEORGE GITTOES' first public reveal of a new series of oil paintings.

The NO EXIT trilogy will be reproduced on a massive scale to be featured on the three BIG DAY OUT main stage speaker scrims. NO EXIT reflects the 30 year long GITTOES global journey through hyper reality - which he calls "Night Vision" (also the title of his current mind blowing graphic novel- film- art series work in progress).

The three panels Night Vision Soldier, Revelation and Night Vision investigate the unending cycles of war, end of the world apocalyptic dreams and the artist investigator/the soldier terminator. They zoom in, zoom out on our global reality of the moment, our sense of our times, the vast monstrous march of wars, the era of surveillance, times of super technology, chaos & horror, and music as the major voice, and our 'saved' moments.

An internationally exhibiting artist, photographer, and writer, GEORGE GITTOES has become something of a comic book style art super hero, prepared to take on guises, enter forbidden zones, face down bad guys, zoom around the globe, and bring back to earth mega messages about our times. His mission: intercepting reality at its most hyper charged state and dropping his 'heightened reality checks' into public places!

This year, the Lilyworld theme is Lilyworld's Enchanted Garden - a green oasis of new musical genres and swinging styles. Enchanting and delighting bewildered individuals who dare to wander past this madness within the world that is the BIG DAY OUT. The merry men of the sherbet forest have been busy propagating a green oasis of buffoontrees, gagvines, goonflowers and oversized discopumpkins right in the heart of the BIG DAY OUT to freak-out and confuse lost souls.

The 2009 LILYWORLD proudly presents ... Who is that man in the three-piece suit and the natty brogues? He is SON OF DAVE, and to witness him at BIG DAY OUT is to witness the blues dragged kicking and howling into the 21st Century. It all began one Christmas in Manitoba, Canada, when father gave young Benjamin Darvill a harmonica and a shaker. Now he stirs thoughts of Beck, the White Stripes and Tom Waits all rolled into one.

From the South African countryside to the wilds of Lilyworld at BIG DAY OUT comes RISENGA'S BUSH TECHNOLOGY, who will catapult you into an ocean of rhythms. With an extraordinary range of music and musical instruments, Risenga Makondo straddles the diasporas from Africa to North and South America and over to Europe. Dance, drum and delight in his energy, charisma and versatility!

MILES CLERET (UK) will send the beard scratching folkies running for the hills (looking for some bush weed) as he swings Lilyworld into a tropical party with rare (and not so rare) upbeat tropical dance music from Latin America, Africa, Brazil and the Caribbean. Remixes with a baking-hot flavour - anything from Nigerian Afrobeat & Ghana Highlife to Colombian Cumbia, Samba from Brazil, Reggae, Calypso, Latin broken-beat, Dancehall and African Hip Hop - from the 1950's to 2009. Dancing Wellies and rakes will definitely be required.

Local heroes on the Lilyworld Stage include MIKEY HAVOC, THE TURNAROUND CREW, SHEBA and the Wellington International Ukulele Orchestra.

With more musical and metaphorical twists and turns than previously thought possible, come Lilyworld's very own Cynical Brothers, Heavy G and "Needy Man" (Christo) who return with this season's range of laughs and double entendres' for the Kate moss who gathers the stones.