Steamy hot show to rock River Fest

By Priscilla Roberts

A global, award-winning electro music duo hailing from Far North Queensland are heading to beef cattle and barra country to entertain audiences at the Rockhampton River Festival this month.

The Ironing Maidens, made up of Melania Jack and CQUniversity’s Patty Preece, will put domestic labour, technology, and the history of women in electronic music on centre stage with their live electronic performance art piece Electro House Wife.

The performance ingeniously adapts real irons and ironing boards into electronic instruments to create groundbreaking music (and a new genre – electro housewife!).

The performance promises high energy, captivating explosions of dance, amazing visuals, wit, humour and steamy hot sounds. 

With house inspired tracks built from real world laundry sounds and samples, the Ironing Maidens’ set bangs like an unbalanced washing machine and audiences will be dancing their way in a wrinkle free, electro experience.

The Ironing Maidens have toured Europe, playing Germany's famous Fusion Festival and the The Performing Arts Festival Berlin, and have featured at Byron Bay's Falls Festival, Woodford Folk Festival, Jungle Love, The Planting Festival, Wide Open Spaces, and were finalists in the Grant McLennan Fellowship and won a John Chataway Innovation Award for their shows at Adelaide Fringe Festival in 2019 and 2020.

Preece, an Associate Lecturer in Music and Theatre Technology at CQUniversity, said Ironing Maidens were born out of homage to the work of Daphne Oram, a pioneer of music technology from the 1950s whose work has been instrumental in the development of the electronic sound industry.

“The music is a fresh new take on house music, with four to the floor beats, driving 303 style bass patterns, samples from 1950s advertising and real-world laundry sounds, as well as lyrical concepts that will iron out your ideas about housework and gender roles,” Preece said.

The Ironing Maidens will be performing at the Rockhampton Customs House on Friday and Saturday nights, 26 and 27 July, and performing a late Sunday late afternoon set (28 July).

Tickets are available online through Oztix.