Živa- "It's just something so visceral that it's impossible for anyone who chooses to stay in the room with me not to be present"
ŽIVA-
BLACK PLANET
25TH JULY TWO VENUES THREE STAGES 21 BANDS
O come, creatures of the night!
Bear witness to BLACK PLANET: A Celebration of Australian Dark Music.
Descending for the first time as a full-spectrum gathering of darkness, Black Planet hosts 3 stages across two iconic venues: The Bendigo Hotel & Nighthawks. Built for devotees of sonic extremity and shadow culture, this inaugural edition transforms the night into a living cathedral of sound, atmosphere, and chaos.
The night will be separated into 3 spaces:
The Ossuary (Bendi Main Room) - A shrine to brutality and all things heavy
The Void (Bendi Upstairs) - A chamber devoted to noise, ambient, drone and experimental
The Black Hearts Lodge (Nighthawks) - A sanctuary of goth, darkwave, post-punk and nocturnal romance
Headlining Black Planet 2026 is THE AMENTA - One of metal's most uncategorizable acts, THE AMENTA have been synthesising the ugliest aspects of death, black, and noise into a unique maelstrom for over 25 years. Well-known across the world for their intense live shows, THE AMENTA combine speed, anger, and a weird sound with smoke and strobes to create a brutal, overwhelming experience.
Joining them across the 3 stages are: Mammon’s Throne, Hybrid Nightmares, Victoria K, Küntsquäd, Bentham’s Head, Knife, Npcede, Živa, Inaugural, Chiffon Magnifique, Blood In The Champagne, Dystropolis, Palliative, Blood of a Pomegranate, Military Position, Anocht, AnnaBortionist, Serene Ailment, Angellis Taliuu, and Koolooz.
What Black Planet gets right is refusing to flatten "dark" into one accent. The Black Hearts Lodge alone runs from ritual noise to synth-driven darkwave to full-band post-punk, and that's before you cross the road to the Bendigo's two rooms of brutality and experimentation. Twenty-one acts, one shared thread — but the thread is wide enough to hold a lot of very different bands without any of them feeling like filler.
ARTIST:
ŽIVA
The Black Hearts Lodge, Nighthawks — 22:00-22:40
Artist intro: ŽIVA is the solo project of Lucija Ivšić, formerly frontwoman of acclaimed Croatian post-punk band Punčke, now based in Melbourne and working a sound she bills as darkwave with a Slavic edge. Her live show is built in real time — live looping, vocal processing and layered instrumentation constructed on the fly rather than triggered from a laptop. Her second album, ŽIIVA, self-released and self-produced across 2025, follows a 2023 debut that earned international attention and radio support from KEXP, SBS, 4ZZZ and PBS. A one-woman act building full-band atmosphere solo — a genuinely distinctive proposition for the Lodge.
INTERVIEW:
1. "Nocturnal romance" is a specific phrase to be filed under — darkness as seduction and ritual rather than pure aggression. Where does Živa sit in that, and where do you push against it?
I have no idea. Those two words I rarely use hehe. Maybe it's better to ask the audience how they see me fitting into it? I'd be curious to see what they answer.
2. Post-punk and darkwave carry a lot of inherited iconography at this point — is that a language Živa is consciously working inside, or something you're trying to strip back to zero?
Not really, I just try to stay in tune with myself, listen to what my body and soul needs, and respond to it either by reading, listening, watching, or ultimately writing, and composing my own music. I think that a lot of my 'personal aura' is built around dark situations, which ultimately always drew me (still do) to darker art, but I am open to having a bit of darkwave and trap in the same song.
3. Black Planet's being pitched as a "living cathedral of sound" — where does your most recent release, or whatever's next in the pipe, sit inside that? Anything dropping around the show we should know about first?
3. Black Planet's being pitched as a "living cathedral of sound" — where does your most recent release, or whatever's next in the pipe, sit inside that? Anything dropping around the show we should know about first?
I think that although I'm just one person (on stage/off stage), what I create has that effect of sounding huge and quite layered, and when you throw polyphonic female singing into the mix, it's hard not to think of vast spaces and big reverb.
It does make me happy in a sense that I feel embraced and that I might have finally found my place in this country that is new to me. Underground is the place where I am most comfortable in and I hope to be part of it even if, in some crazy scenario ŽIVA becomes big, which I doubt if I continue to do whatever I want, which I plan to.
5. Bendigo and Nighthawks are two venues, three rooms, one night. What are you actually trying to do to a room when you play it — what's the physical or psychic effect you're chasing?
I just want to be 100% present and expend every bit of energy I have in me while on stage. And what I've noticed is that if the audience is responsive to that energy, it somehow never runs out, and I feel like I am simultaneously expending and refilling...I am not sure if these are the right English words to describe what I feel when on stage and when everything is right, but it happened in Canberra during Essence, and on Dark Mofo, and I hope it will happen again. It's just something so visceral that it's impossible for anyone who chooses to stay in the room with me not to be present.
6. ŽIIVA, your killer and much-lauded absolute masterpiece dropped in March; you have since launched it in Melbourne magnificently as well as back in Croatia. When I last interviewed you, you said you were still taking it all in, and some songs almost didn't go on the album(some of the finest tracks also IMHO), how is it all that sitting at the present moment, and what's next for your world domination?
To my own surprise, very quickly after our interview I began working on new songs. And I have a few finished already, and now I am trying to stop myself from rushing and already planning its release, but instead enjoying this incredible inspiration I feel at the moment...I don't know what it is, but honestly I don't care; I will just let it all go, and who knows, there might be a new ŽIVA 3.0 out soon:)
LINKS:
---------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
SO GRAB A TICKET ASAP AND START WORKING OUT HOW YOU CAN SEE EVERY BAND...SOMEHOW
KILLER PRICES TO BE HONEST;
Both venues: $75+BF
The Bendigo Hotel Only: $45+BF
Nighthawks Only: $35+BF
ALL PICS ARE FROM THE ARTIST OR BAND'S SOCIAL MEDIA PAGES
Comments
Post a Comment
Feel free to comment, but anything racist or sexist goes in the bin, as you should also.