Brisbane Festival is thrilled to announce its first music act for 2018: hailing from Portland, USA, psych R&B outfit Unknown Mortal Orchestra will return to Australia this September for a run of national dates including Brisbane Festival.

The first to be announced in what will be Brisbane Festival’s heaviest hitting line up to date, Unknown Mortal Orchestra are a force to be reckoned with on stage. With a brand new forthcoming album Sex & Food out April 6 on Jagjaguwar through Inertia, Brisbane Festival presents the first opportunity for Queensland fans to hear the debut tracks from Sex & Food live in Australia for the very first time at an iconic Brisbane music venue.

Last in Australia for a string of sold-out headline shows in 2015, fronted by visionary Ruban Nielson (formerly Mint Chicks), the Sex & Food live show will no doubt deliver something otherworldly, with the band’s live performances often descending into hypnotic psychedelic jams. “I wanted to embrace this abandoned genre of rock music”, says Nielson of their unique sound.

The band’s latest single, ‘Everyone Acts Crazy Nowadays’, was unveiled last week and is the third single to be taken from the forthcoming album, Sex & Food. The hard-hitting first single, ‘American Guilt’, was described by triple j as, “Prince doing stoner rock”, and was followed by the brooding, ‘Not In Love We’re Just High’, which premiered on Beats 1 World Record. Sex & Food follows the critically acclaimed album Multi-Love (2015), which was described by NPR as “The sweetest, catchiest, most impeccably crafted music Unknown Mortal Orchestra has made.”