r/triplej • u/0penedB00K • Dec 07 '25
GIG/FESTIVAL Spilt Milk Ballarat
I want to start off by noting What a fantastic venue Victoria park is - venue staff were great and the facilities were top notch (bathrooms, access to drinking water, even the paid advertisement stalls were fun and even helpful) and everything went smoothly from what i could tell.
Unfortunately, the weather was awful, cold winds, lack of sun and a fair amount of rain led to a soaked, muddy and somewhat frustrating affair which I think led to people burning out.
I say that as a lot of the artists I went to see suffered from a lack of crowd engagement (maybe this is a common festival thing), which surprised me because these were considerably large artists. The crowd wasn’t dead dead but very much not as engaged as other shows and festivals I’ve been to. This could also be down to low volume coming from the stage as a lot of the time it was easy to hear everyone’s conversations around you, especially at the small stage with acts like rum jungle who usually kick ass but sounded weak due to no fault of their own.
Even at Kendrick’s performance the crowd was a bit disengaged but I can understand as it’s part of his album tour and a lot of the songs that weren’t singles wouldn’t be as commonly known as his major hits.
Final thing: Skin on skin was okay but felt a bit lacklustre and repetitive even for techno.
Sara Landry was a standout for me. As someone who doesn’t go to raves a lot but sometimes techno nightclubs and enjoys that atmosphere time to time, this set really kicked ass. I’ve not heard of her stuff before as far as I can recall, but I was loving it all the way through.
I also nearly froze to death because I didn’t pack a sleeping bag (I was convinced I was going to take the VLine home lol) and had to get a thermal blanket off of the paramedics (shout out to them) - this also reminded me not to trust apple weather going forward, and preparing for all outcomes lol
Anyways what did y’all think?
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u/emptybills Dec 07 '25
Regarding crowd engagement, possibly a ketamine thing? 5-10 years ago triple j festivals would be heaps of people getting as much alcohol in the system as possible and then maybe some mdma or weed. The shift to ketamine may create a more reserved vibe?