Sophia Brous wants you to hallucinate. Through legal means, of course, via the medium of performance.
From trance-inducing Moroccan outfit the Master Musicians of Jajouka to the indie space-rock of Britain's Spiritualized and a musical recreation of the Dream Machine, a contraption that alters consciousness, the Australian singer has amassed a transcendental line-up for the return of Supersense: The Festival of the Ecstatic at Arts Centre Melbourne in August.
Brous has spent much of the past few years in New York, where she is an artist in residence at Brooklyn music and arts venue National Sawdust.
She divides her time between the United States and Melbourne, where she is curator and artistic associate on Supersense, the festival she and the Arts Centre first staged in 2015.
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Few knew what to expect from the first Supersense, which had acts including Lydia Lunch, the Jon Spencer Blues Explosion, John Cale and Ariel Pink alongside less mainstream offerings including new wave South Korean group Noreum Machi and Kuda Lumping, an Indonesian trance troupe that performed feats including chewing on fluorescent light bulbs.
The festival saw audience members stand on the State Theatre stage (instead of sit in the seats in front of it) and roam the hallways and rehearsal rooms downstairs that are normally hidden from public view.
"With the first iteration in 2015, the idea was to create a festival where the through line, the axis is about the commonality of this hunger we have for ecstatic experience and transformation and revelation, and the way that that has been recast and refracted over many, many centuries, through traditional ritual, folk-based forms, and then contemporary ritual as we know it today," Brous says.
"I just became really fascinated by that and perhaps realised that for myself as an artist and performer, all the things that I was interested as a maker or as a lover of work, I thought that was the guiding line. What is it that brings together techno electronic music and free jazz improvisation and strobe-lit immersive film spaces?
"This is a fundamental thing we all need, and some people seek it out in sacred spaces, and others in kind of profane or contemporary or seemingly secular spaces. But I think that no matter who the figure or the prophet, they're actually satisfying the same hunger."
The 2017 program also includes traditional Norwegian "yoiking" vocalists, US band Blonde Redhead performing with a string ensemble, and a spoken-word opera by Russian provocateurs Pussy Riot Theatre.
Brous will also draw on some of her own collaborations, including Exo-Tech, her rolling roster of musicians (which has previously included the likes of Sean Lennon and Questlove) with fellow expatriate Kimbra and her Lullaby Movement.
Supersense runs from August 18-20. Tickets on sale from May 25.
Full program: artscentremelbourne.com.au/supersense
EDITOR'S PICKS
The Ecstatic Music of Alice Coltrane Turiyasangitananda
The singers of Alice Coltrane's ashram pay tribute to the pianist, composer, spiritual leader and wife of jazz icon John Coltrane.
The Master Yoiker of Norway: Ande Somby
A master of the "yoiking" vocial tradition of Northern Scandinavia's Indigenous Sami people.
Memory Field
A new work created by Bangarra Dance Theatre's Waangenga Blanco and PVT drummer Laurence Pike.
Overground
A day-long "festival within a festival" of improvised music, featuring more than 200 performers.
Spiritualized
British space rockers perform with the Australian Art Orchestra and Consort of Melbourne choir for the festival finale.