Spontaneity ain’t always easy in Sydney city. This is the place where you must purchase your ticket before boarding the bus. This has been a massive blow to hoards of spontaneous bus-catchers. We no longer wake up in the morning, fling off the covers and spring out of bed, alive with the knowledge that today might be a bus day and that it also might not. The spontaneous power was ours. But we digress.

The NOW now  Spontaneous Music Festival has been tucked quietly up in the Blue Mountains for years, where it can hop on and off buses to it’s unpredictable heart’s content. Now (now), it is descending to your doorstep and bringing some of the most creative local and international musicians and filmmakers together for the purposes of boundary pushing, genre melding and general experimentation. You can now be spontaneous without waiting on a train for two hours beforehand! It will be hosted by three venues in the Inner West, and is celebrating the launch of its 2011 program with a pretty amazing-sounding free gig at the Red Rattler.

On the night you will be treated to experimentations from numerous fresh acts. There will be electronic soundscapes of swill, percussive fun from Robbie Avenaim, multimedia mischief from HU (Aaron Hull and Greg Hughes) and some free-stylin from Prophets. You could also score a goody bag of giveaway of CDs featuring a hand picked playlist of festival artists. The festival program is a united nations of music. Catch Yan Jun from China,  Brisbane’s Sky Needle, Tassie’s Untermorast, Germany’s Magda Mayas, Argentina’s Alan Courtis, Scandinavia’s The Thing and more.

The NOW Now Festival

Launching Thursday 16 December, 6pm

Red Rattler, 6 Favisham St, Marrickville

Free entry