Huh? Yeah haha, what? Shit. Oh yeah, may I please have a blue cheese and cauliflower pie and a coffee. I don't care; the waking up kind, please...

Bloody here we go. Last day of the main fest mate! Fuck, I'm not gonna lie. It's been a big coupla days… It has for a lot of people but today is bloody jam packed of amazing stuff so it's not too hard of a task to crawl out of the filth nested in the night before and get onto the bloody ROMA.

I'm the kind of man that likes getting up as much as an irradiative colonic and with the blaring sun it is hard to venture about outside. The ROMA arrives at MONA just as Mike Noga wraps up, so things already aren't going swimmingly. As mentioned before, it's been a long couple of days and over at the main stage, to paraphrase Tony Soprano in relation to the sparse beanbags and shade kicking about, "…Have you tried getting one of them? The French hold onto them like their balls.” It's hard, so hard. Kudos to the fresh-faced goombahs that slept last night and are already downing beers. Funk them! But I shouldn'ta gone to Poobah again, fuck fucking fuck. Kill me. Ignore this...

Actually, God, really fucking kill me. The nauseating spoken word musings of Elise Taylor come across like your mother trying to talk to you about sex but she’s forgotten to take her meds in a couple of weeks. With emphasis on her phrasing, on paper it reads like a poorly worded website on eBay. For example… SEX, she cried on the sorrowful morn. DOES SHE KNOW THE FLESH!!?! or will she… cry between her thighs as the raven answers the illuminati's call. VULVA, SEX, DEATH SEX!!! (insert Homer shuddering picture here…).

Right, back on track then. A huge drawcard to get up today is the collaborative performance between Oren Ambarchi and Will Guthrie. The ant crawling up my back biting me is less blistering than this performance, as these two are a brutal amazing wake up. From beginning to end the set is an attack, as Ambarchi with his little effects table and guitar tapping make a (commonly used - yet fucking appropriate phrase) wall of sound and Guthrie sorta ditches his 'hey look at my cool intellectual yet cool' playing from the day before and is a new machine in many ways, blast beating and smashing his kit apart to Ambarchi's fiddle. Though my arms and legs feel like uncooked sausages flopping over the full frying pan that is my torso, I am constantly lifting my head up from the beanbag to try and catch a glimpse of what stupefying thing either or both are up too. The fact that these two haven't made a record together (though they have collaborated a few times in the live arena before today) is mystifying upon the conclusion of the set, as everything that came before radiated power from both a moving performance stand point but musically to the point that the performance itself would make a solid bloody record. The only complaint lies in that Ambarchi gets so loud at points that it consumes the little space in the sonic field for Guthrie. Still, who cares! Do as I said! Make a record.

Part two in the wake up, as talked about in part two of this coverage, comes straight away over at the Turrell stage (stupid walking). WIldbirds and Peacedrums are killing it and it's damn hard not to get down. The Swedish husband and wife duo have ventured to our shores a coupla times since their debut in 2008 and back in the day it was hard to believe that the group - whom rely mainly on just percussion and voice - would still be delivering challenging and exciting music some eight years on. But they fucking are! they sure as bloody fuck are! The primal feel of it all really translates into this almost funk or soul like experience and the two play off each other so naturally it’s almost annoying in the way that you want to be like that. Mariam's voice is so emotive that it calls back to Aretha Franklin or even a classically trained opera singer and rah rah rahdy rah, while Andreas' drumming is so complex and tight, while drawing from 70's psych and modern electronica roody roo roo. Bottom line, this set is amazing and throughout it doesn't (like O and W before…) let up, even the numbers that are 'quieter' wind up being these hip shaking explorations of sound. A triumphant round of applause is given upon conclusion while one shirtless gentleman pirouettes down the stairs off to never never land.

Ok, so we're awake now. No more bitching and whining about all the booze drank the night before, it's time to get back down again!

BUT, before you hit the bottle reading this and imagine you're seeing this intriguing music jazz, it’s time to talk about art, as it is a music and arts festival ya know, and not one of those dribble ones where they have a Smirnoff bar with a few upside down trees on the ceiling and they pass it off as art on the title of the festival on the ticket.

INSIDE MONA

Over the weekend countless things are happening within the gallery from classical performances to film screenings to bloody complex musical experiments and just about everything in between. Here are a few highlights:

Mathieu Briand - - ][SYS*11. Mie>AbE/SoS\ ][SYS*10][][ aka The Spiral - Right, while it’s odd to technically begin the section entitled 'INSIDE MONA' with something that was outside, shut up ok. French artist/musician Mathieu Briand hands-down won the art of the festival, and personally I spent so much time at this bloody thing that it’s embarrassing. It's a simple concept, five turntables are set up, each playing a custom made record of loops and sounds and people are invited to come up and do their own mix of the sounds and a 7" of your mix is cut live whilst making it. Anyone can do it and a blank 7" is a measly $5 and given the chance I would have made five of my own mixes and then cut a mega mix of all my mixes but Briand did that himself on the final day, so fuck it. At the end of the festival I was on first name terms with the guys behind the exhibition and a handful of beer soaked vinyl.

Gilbert and George - UK pop art collaborators Gilbert & George are the leading exhibition at MONA over the festival and the exhibition contains 97 of their works from the 70's to 2014. While pop art can be a bit of a faux (ha) art minefield, G&G throughout this exhibition managed to act as a Bonnie 'Prince' Billy to, say, a Warhol's Mumford and Sons. It's dark and confronting, it’s tripped out and it’s simple and ultimately and personally a welcome surprise to the festival.

Poo Machine - Nothing new to the fest here. The poo machine is a MONA mainstay but I was able to catch it for the first time, though unfortunately didn't see it shit, but learnt it eats food from the restaurant upstairs and craps everyday at 2pm.

Project Drums - Project Drums is a bloody big drum performance and is improvised. Straight up!

Other things of note include Hermesensemble’s Museum Walks and the TSOC (Tasmanian Symphony Orchestra Choir) Extreme which are performances that happen on the fly around the gallery. Evelyn Ida Morris performs a number of  pretty good Pikelet style shows in Cinemona.

Back into it, over on the main stage, Kate Tempest is a British somewhat rapper, somewhat singer-songwriter, somewhat beat poet and it’s a bit of a change up from what has come before today with a loud electronic backdrop demanding notice underneath Tempest's stylised delivery, which also at times is a bit of a turn off. With the number of acts from the UK that deliver working class perspectives into their lyrics and musical stylings, Tempest doesn't really offer anything new or exciting in comparison to past acts that pioneered the style and other acts offering a new perspective e.g. Sleaford Mods. Her delivery throughout feels passionate, particularly during her extensive closing piece which sees Tempest deliver a gritty beat poetry flavoured piece, but as a whole it doesn't resonate throughout.

Rounding out our time at MONA is the much talked about Arthur Russell's Instrumentals a specially commissioned performance led by Peter Zummo celebrating the life and music of Arthur Russell and his weird and joyous back catalogue. With the sun down low, the feel of this largely orchestral based performance is a perfect note to go out on. The set isn't a clearly defined playing of Russell's hits or identifiable numbers, and for the most part it feels almost as a completely different entity to Russell, but throughout smiles are universal amongst the reconvening energy of the crowd. An overwhelming response for an encore upon the conclusion of the set is given by the audience, and unfortunately with no more time and a lack of rehearsed material by the ensemble, is met with a cryptic poem delivered instead by Zummo, though ultimately, this was the perfect way to end our time at MONA.

It's the last night man, the last Faux Mo! Gotta go out and party hard tonight before we all get sucked into the cruel mistress of day to day life away from this fantasy playground but bugger it here we go!

Tonight's Faux Mo is debatably the most music focussed outing of the three fauxs, with a much anticipated set from festival headliner DJ Krush being the gooey centre in a crème egg of aural delight.

Making their way down from Brissy (not the local hotel) are local legends HITS, whom by this point are hard not to fault when it comes to having the slap in the balls rock formula down. The crowd lap it up and the band give it their all, making way through their classic growing back catalogue. Following on the inside stage are Hobart enigmas The Harrison Forward, who have become synonymous with pure fucking weirdness onstage here at MoFo and its dark sister (see here for a report on their Blacklist performance). Where to begin… Musically who knows what’s going on with the group's Bez, on the middle of the stage naked on a podium covered in tomato sauce while the group’s double frontmen command the crowd  - its kind of a weird bit of art. What follows is heavy nudity, crowd surfing, more nudity, that 'turn around bright eyes song' (being played through iTunes), more nudity, Peter Charles McPherson doing a weird bit of spoken word, Love (not hate), nudity, pills, n u d i t y, (not practiced I’m sure) appreciation for illicit substances, more fucking nudity and of course Lil John's Turn Down fo What. It is all a weird experience, the Forward are something to be experienced, dreamt about and have stained permanently on your mind, all in the name of LOVE and MDMA.

The last stop on the kook office building dream, DJ Krush makes his return to a packed outdoor stage of keen (debatably munted) punters. Those present at his MONA set are the giddiest, incoherently babbling to the nearest person about 'how sick' he was the other day while those about to have their Krush cherry popped prep for the best. What follows is a set that is different on a number of different levels from the previous days whilst retaining certain Krush trademarks. The set is definitely more 'party' in nature and less ambient than before and the change is more than welcome in these confines. Again, his talents as a turntablist and musician/music lover are unquestionable and the set flows so naturally. In the later portions, Krush's Bowie tribute of playing Let's Dance uninterrupted is simply beautiful and has the whole place moving with joy. He then gets a bit classics happy and remixes the likes of Lennon which go well and Smoke on the Water which borders on the point of parody but all in good humour. The extensive set is the most perfect parting gift to the strange and wonderful oddity that is Faux Mo and the festival in general.

So there it is, another notch in the belt and bed post. Having made changes to the layout and set up of Mofo in the past have all paid off and the result is an unforgettable festival that has to be experienced by all. With my resume lying in a Dark Mofo background, when comparing the two entities offered by the MONA team is like comparing mangos to watermelon, both are pretty bloody amazing! While Dark Mofo falls more on discovery, MoFo relies on more 'tradition' when it comes to a music and arts festival and ultimately showcases what it should be and what a festival can be and takes it one step further into territory you never thought you'd step foot on. Hats off to all those involved, see ya at Darky, see ya again next year and the year after that, amen.

For part one of this review, and why not! click ere…

- Bradley Armstrong.