Press / 3 August 2026
skip-a-beat x Now or Never: A Mumbai–Melbourne Transmedia Takeover
skip-a-beat is heading to Melbourne. The Mumbai transmedia label has partnered with Now or Never, the City of Melbourne’s festival of new ideas and future-facing culture, for a one-night takeover that brings South Asian electronic music, visual art, and conversation to Max Watt’s on Friday 21 August 2026.
Billed as a meeting point where “Mumbai meets Melbourne in a celebration of the creative currents connecting the two cities,” the skip-a-beat transmedia takeover moves from artist talk to exhibition to the club across a single evening — the label’s largest presentation in Australia to date. The event is supported by the City of Melbourne.
The Takeover
The night unfolds in stages. From 8pm, a media arts exhibition and a screening of Neural Natak — A Technomagic Film open the space, framing the ideas that run through skip-a-beat’s practice before the music begins. From 9pm through to 2am, the room turns over to audiovisual and DJ sets.
At the heart of the evening is the premiere of a new audiovisual work by Spryk and Australian visual artist Dave Court, built specifically for the dancefloor — a live A/V collaboration that pairs Spryk’s electronic music with Court’s visual language in real time.
Two Cities, One Floor
Around the premiere, the lineup gathers South Asian and diaspora artists shaping club culture across both cities: Chor Bazaar, Mowgli, Primary Thug, and CNTRL V. Threading through the entire night is a multi-screen visual art exhibition co-curated with the Melbourne media arts collective Pseudo, transforming Max Watt’s into a shared room for communities from Mumbai and Melbourne alike. The showcase brings together work from Abhijit Vinayak, Akshita Sinha, Amalendu Kaushik, Aniruddh Mehta, Damini Gupta, Era Namjoshi, Luca Dante, Nikunj Patel, Othersoul, Passive Kneeling, Poyo, Rel Pham, and Surabhi Banerjee.
For skip-a-beat, the takeover extends a thread that runs through the label’s recent international work — placing Indian electronic and audiovisual practice in direct conversation with the festivals and cities it visits, as a collaboration between scenes rather than a showcase parachuted in.
Event Details
skip-a-beat transmedia takeover — Now or Never 2026
Friday 21 August 2026, 8pm–2am · Max Watt’s, Melbourne · Licensed 18+
Lineup: Spryk x Dave Court (Live A/V premiere), Chor Bazaar, Mowgli, Primary Thug, CNTRL V, with the Neural Natak film and a Pseudo-curated media arts exhibition.
Tickets and full festival listing: Now or Never ↗ / Book via Oztix ↗