South by Southwest offers techno fans a chance to bypass WMC in favor of Thomas Dolby...not to mention Lesbians on Ecstasy.
South by Southwest, the annual festival of music and film in Austin, TX, isn’t exactly on the go-to grid for electronica fans. For one thing, it’s held in March, which everyone knows is already consigned to WMC.
It’s hard enough to consider doing WMC and Coachella practically back-to-back, but SxSW, too? And for another thing, SxSW is strictly for indie and alt-rockers, right?
Well, not entirely. If you can’t bring yourself to brave the crowds and expense of March in Miami, Austin is offering quite a variety of electronic music this year. Three of the acts—Purple Crush, Au Revoir Simone, and Caural—are actually from my recently adopted town, Brooklyn.
It’s a measure of how far Brooklyn’s come that musicians and artists now have no problem owning their city; not so long ago, a sheepish “New York City” is all Brooklynites were willing to own up to.
Anyway, by far the biggest act there will be Thomas Dolby. Yes, “Blinded Me with Science” Thomas Dolby from the 1980s. He was definitely early-adopter “electronica”—in fact, most kids like me thought he’d invented Dolby sound :-).
He toured last year to promote his Sole Inhabitant CD, which is his older songs remixed with modern technology. People who heard him in concert, especially his Berklee College of Music performance, which was recorded, seemed to love it.
Well-known DJ Amon Tobin is also going to be at SxSW, which at first seems strange. I mean, he’s a DJ—his rightful place is at WMC! But it seems he’s gone somewhat experimental with his upcoming album, Foley Room—it’s a CD created from “found sounds” and such, and the few songs from the album on his MySpace page are very IDM indeed. Not bad.
The folks at SxSW have been good enough to provide bios and listening pages for nearly all the acts, and some of them—Lesbians on Ecstasy, The Pinker Tones (from Barcelona), Metalchicks (electro-metal, from Japan)--will draw you in on name alone. Let me know what you think.
