How it started

In 2020, a poster appeared on the wall of Northside Records in Fitzroy. The Field Guide to the Sound Systems of Melbourne, created by El Gran Mono, mapped a scene that had been growing across the city for years: hand-built speaker systems devoted to reggae and dub, drum and bass, techno, experimental bass music and Colombian picó culture.

For Strange Engine driver Jason Maling and Northside Records owner and DJ Chris Gill, the poster made something visible. Melbourne had a remarkable sound system culture, spread across different suburbs, musical traditions and communities, but rarely recognised as a cultural movement in its own right.

They started wondering what would happen if all of those systems were brought together.

Jamaican-born DJ, promoter and sound system veteran Stick Mareebo joined the project, bringing decades of knowledge and relationships within Jamaican music and Melbourne's bass community. Together they developed Heavy Congress and pitched the idea to RISING.

The festival said yes.

RISING, Melbourne / 2021–22

What followed took two years, a pandemic and a lot of persistence.

The first Heavy Congress was due to take over Melbourne Town Hall in June 2021. Two days before the event, Melbourne went back into lockdown and RISING was cancelled. Rather than abandon the project, the extra year became part of its development.

Strange Engine provided a place for the project to keep growing. Members of the sound system community met regularly at our Preston studio, working through how an event involving multiple fiercely individual systems, crews and musical cultures might operate as one gathering. Jason Maling and Anna Schoo provided project leadership and continuity, working alongside Stick Mareebo, Chris Gill, producer Lauren Mullings and RISING to hold together an increasingly complex undertaking.

Strange Engine’s role moved between convening, producing and creative direction. We helped create the conditions in which the different crews could develop the event together, while shaping the wider artistic language around it: how the systems occupied the room, how audiences encountered them, the visual identity, film, printed material and the broader story being told about Melbourne's sound system culture.

On 4 June 2022, Heavy Congress finally took over the Forum Theatre.

Ten complete, hand-built sound systems filled one of Melbourne's great music venues. Five faced five across the room. There was no conventional stage. Over almost eight hours, selectors, DJs, MCs and performers moved the audience between reggae, dub, drum and bass, techno, experimental electronics and champeta. More than 1,200 people came through the doors.

The systems themselves were the architecture.

The audience continually turned, crossed the room and gathered again as each new system came alive. Communities that usually operated in different parts of Melbourne found themselves sharing a single dancefloor. For one night, a culture largely built in warehouses, back rooms, streets, parks and community spaces occupied the Forum on its own terms.

The Outcome

Heavy Congress also grew beyond the event itself.

Long-time sound system photographer Francesco Vicenzi was commissioned to interview and document the participating crews. What began as a series of short introductions grew during the pandemic delay into a feature-length document of Melbourne sound system culture, preserving the histories, knowledge and voices behind the speaker stacks. That material later became Heavy! A Congress of Sound Systems in Melbourne/Naarm, presented internationally at the Global Reggae Conference in Kingston, Jamaica.

A limited-edition Heavy Congress 7-inch was produced with Monkey Marc and members of the local scene, becoming the first physical release from RISING's Singles Club. Legendary Graphic designer John Warwicker worked with Jason Maling on a family of posters, prints and imagery, while Chantal Marks developed the spatial design of the Forum event.

Heavy Congress did not invent Melbourne's sound system scene. The scene had been built over decades by people investing their own money, labour and time into systems, parties and communities.

What Heavy Congress did was give that culture an unprecedented, shared platform.

It brought parallel histories and musical communities into the same room. It introduced their work to a much broader Melbourne audience. It created new relationships within the scene and helped establish a public record of a significant moment in the city's musical culture.

In the years since, Melbourne's sound system movement has continued to expand, with new systems, new generations and new events appearing across the city. Heavy Congress has continued independently under Stick Mareebo's leadership.

For Strange Engine, the project represents one model of how we work: recognising something culturally significant that is already happening, bringing the right people together around it, and providing the space, resources, creative leadership and institutional support required for an ambitious idea to become possible.

PROJECT TEAM

Concept and project leadership — Jason Maling

Producer and MC — Stick Mareebo

Producer — Chris Gill, Northside Records

Producer — Lauren Mullings

Executive Producer — Anna Schoo, Strange Engine

Photography and film — Francesco Vicenzi

Graphic design — John Warwicker

Set design — Chantal Marks

RISING Producer — Bronwyn Belcher