The Avalanches close Perth Festival 2027: new album No Bad Memories comes to East Perth Power Station
Australian sampling pioneers The Avalanches will perform on 28 February 2027 on the closing night of Perth Festival, on the Main Stage at East Perth Power Station. According to the festival's official programme page, doors for the concert open at 8 pm local time, with tickets priced from 99 to 139 Australian dollars. The performance is among the first major events confirmed for the festival edition that will run from 5 to 28 February 2027. Organisers are presenting the concert as a career-spanning show by the group, but with a particular emphasis on their fourth studio album No Bad Memories, which is scheduled for release on 16 October 2026. This will give audiences in Perth an opportunity to hear the new material several months after the album's release, in a venue that in recent years has become one of the most striking festival locations in Western Australia.
The confirmation of The Avalanches comes ahead of the release of the full Perth Festival 2027 programme, which according to information from the festival is scheduled for 29 October 2026. The early announcement also presented major theatre and opera projects, including ROHTKO by Polish director Łukasz Twarkowski and Operation:Orfeo by Danish company Hotel Pro Forma, while Foy Vance and The Paper Kites have already been announced for East Perth Power Station as well. Such a programme suggests that organisers will continue next year to connect international performing arts, contemporary music and large atmospheric locations. The Avalanches are also taking on a symbolically important position: their concert is taking place on the final day of the festival and closes the music programme at the riverside venue. For a group whose aesthetic has for decades been based on memory, found sound and the recontextualisation of fragments of popular culture, the industrial backdrop of the former power station carries additional thematic weight.
No Bad Memories brings a new phase for The Avalanches
No Bad Memories will be the fourth studio album by The Avalanches and the first since 2020's We Will Always Love You. The group's official store confirms a release date of 16 October 2026, while the digital edition features an extensive track list and a series of guest performers from different areas of music. The collaborators include Jamie xx, Karen O, Ryoji Ikeda, Rivers Cuomo, Mike Patton, Panda Bear, Carly Simon, Barry Can’t Swim, Portraits of Tracy and Haruomi Hosono. Pitchfork reported in August, following the album's official announcement, that its concept deals with advertising jingles, commercial sonic signatures and the way marketing remains embedded in personal memories. In its concert announcement, the festival describes a similar idea as a journey through sounds that can be simultaneously magical and unsettlingly persistent in collective memory.
Several songs from the album have already been released ahead of its arrival. They include Together, recorded with Nikki Nair, Jessy Lanza and Prentiss, Every Single Weekend with Jamie xx, Blue Shadows with Karen O, and Can’t Get Over Losing You with Portraits of Tracy. The released material shows that The Avalanches continue to develop their recognisable collage-based approach while further expanding their circle of collaborators. Instead of relying solely on nostalgia for earlier work, the new project turns nostalgia into the subject itself: how the sounds of brands, devices, television advertisements and everyday media become part of private memory. Precisely for that reason, the announced Perth performance will not be only a retrospective but also one of the first major opportunities for the album's new concept to be transferred into a concert format.
From Since I Left You to the new tour
The Avalanches gained an international reputation with the 2000 album Since I Left You, a work that elevated the technique of sampling to the centre of their own musical language. In its official announcement, Perth Festival describes them as sampling pioneers who defined an era of electronic music with that debut. After a long recording hiatus, the group returned with Wildflower in 2016, followed four years later by We Will Always Love You. Because of the large gaps between releases, their discography has an unusual rhythm, but every new chapter has retained an interest in collage, pop culture, dance music and the emotional power of found sounds. No Bad Memories continues that continuity, although it directs it towards a highly contemporary theme: the way corporate and technological sounds become part of one's personal past.
The group's official performance schedule, available on 10 September 2026, shows that The Avalanches have a series of concerts and festival appearances in Europe and the United States during the second half of the year, while Perth Festival is confirmed for 28 February 2027 as a live concert in Australia. The programme lists this performance as a live concert rather than merely a DJ set, which is important for audiences who follow the different formats of their performances. The repertoire is expected to combine No Bad Memories with key songs from earlier stages of their career, although a detailed set list has, understandably, not yet been released. The festival explicitly states that highlights from their work to date will also be represented alongside the new album. This means that the closing night is not conceived exclusively as promotion for the new release, but as a broader celebration of the group's musical identity.
East Perth Power Station returns to the centre of the festival
East Perth Power Station is located on the eastern edge of central Perth, alongside the Swan River, or Derbarl Yerrigan, and in recent years has been transformed into one of Perth Festival's central venues. According to DevelopmentWA, the complex occupies an area of approximately 8.5 hectares, bounded by East Parade, Summers Street, the river and the Graham Farmer Freeway transport corridor. The former power station closed on 23 December 1981 after 68 years of operation, and its buildings and equipment have protected heritage status. After decades during which public access was not possible in its present form, the site was used in 2025 for the first time for a major festival activation open to the wider public. DevelopmentWA states that Perth Festival again held a multi-day music programme there in 2026.
The festival had previously announced plans to activate East Perth Power Station as a cultural space from 2025 to 2028, with music, performances and visual installations. For 2027, the venue's official page confirms the return of the programme from 5 to 28 February, with the site opening from 5 pm on programme days. Entry to the wider venue area is free, while separate tickets are required for events on the Main Stage, such as the concert by The Avalanches. Casa Musica also returns to the same location, a free evening programme conceived as a place for music, food and socialising by the river. The power station thus continues to function not only as a concert backdrop but also as a distinct festival precinct.
The history of the location gives these events an additional dimension. DevelopmentWA states that stabilisation, infrastructure and remediation work in recent years has included the removal and replacement of the asbestos roof, repairs to walls, windows and steel elements, undergrounding part of the electricity infrastructure and remediation of contaminated land. Such work has enabled the gradual opening of the complex's outdoor areas, although the historic building itself remains the subject of a long-term revitalisation plan. Through its use of the site, the festival temporarily connects industrial heritage, contemporary art and urban development. For visitors from outside Australia, it is precisely this combination that is one of the elements distinguishing Perth Festival from conventional festival programmes distributed only across theatres and concert halls.
Perth Festival enters a new season with an international programme
Perth Festival was founded by the University of Western Australia in 1953, and organisers describe it as Australia's longest-running continuous arts festival. It grew out of the university's summer programme and over more than seven decades expanded into theatre, music, film, visual arts, literature and major projects in public space. The festival operates on Noongar Boodjar and regularly highlights the role and contemporary practice of Aboriginal artists in its programmes. The 2027 edition will be led by artistic director Anna Reece, who took charge of the 2025-2028 programme period. According to official information, the festival will run for 24 days, from 5 to 28 February.
Among the first projects announced is ROHTKO, an almost four-hour multimedia production by Łukasz Twarkowski combining theatre, technology and a live-cinema approach, which will be performed from 5 to 13 February at His Majesty’s Theatre. Towards the end of the festival, from 25 to 27 February, the same stage will host Operation:Orfeo, a visual-musical work by Danish group Hotel Pro Forma with the Latvian Radio Choir. On the music side, Foy Vance and The Paper Kites will perform at East Perth Power Station on 7 February. These early elements of the programme demonstrate an intention to combine traditional festival disciplines with major concerts and works that cross the boundaries between theatre, film, opera and visual art. The full programme will be announced on 29 October, and only then will the complete scope of the 2027 edition be known.
According to The Music's report on the early programme announcement, artistic director Anna Reece emphasised that the festival opens with Twarkowski's ROHTKO, while Operation:Orfeo appears in the closing part of the programme, and East Perth Power Station once again becomes the festival's main summer music hub. Within that framework, The Avalanches are not just another name on the concert list, but the performer entrusted with the finale itself. For a festival that increasingly uses the city's architecture and historic spaces as an integral part of its programme, the choice of a group known for rearranging the sonic past feels considered. An industrial building from another era and music that creates new contexts from remnants of recorded culture meet on the same stage.
Tickets and practical information for the closing night
The official Perth Festival website states that The Avalanches concert will take place on Sunday, 28 February 2027, on the Main Stage at East Perth Power Station, 11 Summers Street, East Perth. Doors open at 8 pm, and ticket prices range from 99 to 139 Australian dollars, depending on the category. Organisers warn that the performance may include haze, strobe lighting and flashing lights. The venue is licensed for alcohol sales, and people under the age of 18 must be accompanied by a responsible adult. Entry to the wider power station area is free, but the Main Stage has a separate ticketing arrangement.
For visitors planning to arrive by public transport, the festival lists East Perth as the nearest railway station, approximately 800 metres on foot from the riverside entrance, while Claisebrook is around 1.2 kilometres away. Limited paid parking is available at the venue, along with designated accessible parking and passenger drop-off zones. Organisers recommend public transport because of the limited number of parking spaces. For an international audience, it is important to emphasise that all stated times are local to Perth, namely Australian Western Standard Time. Information about transport, accessibility and entry rules may change by February, so it is sensible to check them again on the festival's official website before arrival.
For the events announced early, including The Avalanches, The Music reported that general ticket sales begin on 11 September 2026 at 12 pm local time, following a presale for Festival Club members. This applies to this early group of announced programmes, while the full festival will be presented at the end of October. Interest in the closing concert could be strengthened by the fact that by then The Avalanches will already have had several months of live experience with the album No Bad Memories, meaning Perth audiences will probably receive a well-developed concert version of the new material rather than songs being tested live for the first time. Final production details, the duration of the performance and the exact set list have not yet been announced. What is confirmed is that on 28 February The Avalanches will close Perth Festival 2027 with a combination of new songs and material from a career spanning more than a quarter of a century.
Sources:
- Perth Festival - official The Avalanches concert page with the date, location, prices and entry rules (link)
- Perth Festival - official East Perth Power Station page with dates, access and venue information (link)
- Perth Festival - information about the 2027 festival dates, announcement of the full programme and artistic leadership (link)
- Perth Festival - festival history and overview of its development since its foundation in 1953 (link)
- DevelopmentWA - official East Perth Power Station timeline, including its closure in 1981 and festival activations in 2025 and 2026 (link)
- DevelopmentWA - overview of the site, heritage status and information about remediation and infrastructure work (link)
- The Avalanches - official performance schedule with the confirmed live concert at Perth Festival on 28 February 2027 (link)
- The Avalanches Official Store - release date and track list for the album No Bad Memories (link)
- Pitchfork - announcement of the album No Bad Memories, the album's concept and confirmed collaborators (link)
- The Music - early announcement of the Perth Festival 2027 programme and ticket-sale information for the first announced events (link)