New homes for The Gate

Fri 4th Mar, 2011 in Local News

FL’s reviewer described The Gate as a live music experience like no other in Sydney. When you arrive, you are greeted by a doorman who politely asks for your name; a far cry from the majority of bouncers at music venues, who could reduce a grown man to tears with a single glance. The venue is essentially a backyard with a P.A. system. This provides an unrivaled level of intimacy for punters and artists alike.

However, after eight months of shows in Ryde featuring the likes of Betty Airs, Telafonica, Alps, Seekae, Guineafowl, The Paper Scissors and The Laurels, The Gate is now moving on.

Joe Hardy, one of the Gate’s founders explains that: “Instead of just being a regular event, we’ve decided to turn our energy towards doing whatever we can to get live music on the radar across the broad spread of Sydney’s northern and north-western suburbs.”

The Gate will live on in two new ventures – No Fixed Address, which takes the Gate concept to backyards across North Sydney and a series of ‘experimental’ shows at a café in Epping.

The Gate @ Pablos (42 Langston Place, Epping) aims to feature up-and-coming music that isn’t afraid to try new, interesting things covering experimental electronica, folk, pop, neo-classical and noise with a strong emphasis on combining sound and light. The Gate @ Pablo’s will be launched on Saturday 2nd April with performances by Melbourne’s Wintercoats, and Sydney’s Cleptoclectics and Loopsnake.

A series of pop-up backyard concerts – No Fixed Address – will also see The Gate appearing in a new backyard in Ryde, Hornsby, Ku-ring-gai, Carlingford and other surrounding areas.

Gate co-founder Carly Hardy says that “It wasn’t fair to expect the neighbourhood to put up with loud music as an ongoing and indefinite proposition. At the time of finishing the shows we’d had an overwhelming number of people living in the area tell us how much they loved what we were doing, and only one or two people with a more negative attitude towards it. Even so, we decided it was better to not take people’s goodwill for granted and move onto new things while we were ahead.”

The Gate will present gigs in the backyards of people who nominate them, subject to complying with a variety of criteria including safety, location and neighbourhood support.

The first No Fixed Address event is expected to be held at the end of April.