South by Southwest is a week of performances by cutting-edge underground artists, potpourris of paper-based entry wristbands, and getting to know Texas’ notoriously weird city. Even to someone like myself who’s experienced two CMJs, and having worked at a college radio station for the past four years and thinking I know music, SXSW has proven me floored as the next level of music festival. The showcase features a range of artists, from dystopian midwestern folk rockers to DC-originated moombahton DJs.
Taking place every spring in Austin, Texas, the city transforms itself into a fantasy world for a week, flooding the city with musicians, journalists, Silicon Valley entrepreneurs, and loyal followers and fans. Locals also have a strong presence at SXSW, a few Austinites I met were St. Edwards students and were generally enthusiastic about having artists from across the globe come to them. Not to say Austin is a city at all lacking musical culture. Famously, Austin is also known for PBS Show “Austin City Limits,” which, since broadcasting on national television since 1976, has opened up Austin’s entertainment draw to the rest of the nation. During South By, Austin locales are rented out for the week and taken over by artistic collectives, record companies, and American companies to further industry connections. The venues and bars of the city of Austin open their doors, promoters standing outside vouching for all passerbys to see “the next big band.†Although its a lot for anyone to absorb in a week, I’m going to guide you through a number of amazing acts who should be worthy of your attention in 2012.
Grimes
It was a partly cloudy Friday on a rooftop when Grimes performed at ‘Live From The Lot’ presented by Google Music and Youtube. The crowd stood dispersed over an open top space, eager to see the young electronic indie maven.
Grimes is a rare flower in a digital environment taken over by synth robots. First, she’s a solo female artist who represents a culture of internet-influenced, ultra hip, skirt-wearing females who have no shame in wearing jewels on their faces. Grimes shined outward, as she whispered and sang into the microphone with a tasteful falsetto. She looked especially star-studded at SXSW, wearing blue oversized reflective neon sunglasses that balanced off her elven features. She was accompanied by her also ultra hip keyboardist who was wearing a single, dangling triangle earring and both working out an edgy bohemian vibe. Grimes’ fairy-like presence really captured the crowd into a fantasy realm. Singing “Oblivion,” she cast a spell on the crowd, falling into her very real, fantasy world, head-bobbing and singing along. Grimes is the new girl next door with a new age vibe.
Kitsuné Club Night: Plastic Plates and Housse de Racket
South By took on a disco vibe at the Kitsuné Club night hosted by Parisian record label Kitsuné-Mason, who have previously signed hit-bands like Air and release highly sought-after Kitsuné Mason compilation albums a few times a year. Starting off the buzz of the evening, Plastic Plates from Australia didn’t just spin to please the masses. He controlled an entire DJ-set solely with his own productions. He told the crowd in disbelief, “It’s crazy, I can’t believe I’m doing this,†as he branded the whole show with music by himself. While many DJs I saw at SXSW overplayed Chris Brown and Rhianna club mixes for mass appeal, Plastic Plates won my ultimate ‘indie’ award for SXSW for being a musical purple-heart soldier and not giving into the easy regression of playing top 40 mixes. He twisted slow disco beats in his own edits of I Blame Coco, Gypsy and the Cat, and Body Language were highlights. The clean, shimmery beats refreshed, invigorated and really worked up the momentum of the balcony crowd.
The second act at the Kitsuné Club night who triumphed the night as newcomers are French indie rock two piece Housse de Racket. Lead singer Pierre Leroux spoke in a thick french accent when introducing his band, rendering him unable to pronounce “Austin” in anything but an awkwardly cute fashion. Although physically small in size, they showed the crowd what they were made of, reminiscent of 2010 francophone craze Phoenix. The duo was pop-oriented and playing a sound with curly synths and sharp, focused beats. From short pop hit “Oh Yeah!†to the synth mid ranges achieved in “Chateau,†the two-some fit nicely against the scenic Maleverde balcony, with tropical plants swaying in the breeze behind them, the French band with US appeal lined up a set of indie rock jams that could only come from the consistently solid Kitsuné label.
Pictureplane
Travis Edgey, literally glowing in spotlights and standing in front of a backdrop covered in corporate logos, played a set loaded with irony at the Chevrolet-sponsored “Chevy Sound Garage†Wednesday of SXSW. Edgey is a trance master known for being an icon to the internet founded sea-punk movement. So as he faced his set which, to him, was under siege by sponsorship of corporate entities, he shouted corporate names into the crowd, satirically thanking Doritos, AT&T and Chevy for sponsoring the event. Making fun of the corporate sponsorship he had succumbed to was probably his way of grappling with the situation of sponsorship overtake at SXSW this year.
Musically, Pictureplane is not afraid to be a modern rebel of the electronic scene, creating a mixed genre aesthetic and asking his listeners to engage in social critique. Edgey played a short lesson in gender studies with songs like “Techno Fetish,†“Trancegender,†“Real Is A Feeling†and “Post Physical.†Mostly playing tunes off 2011 release Thee Physical. Edgey had even printed “Real Is A Feeling” onto a banner which hung behind him, literally animating his album’s vision on to the stage. The punk club kid also wore a bikini shirt for show, which I thought was cool. After his set, he went into the crowd and with black leather gloves and shook hands with fans and answered questions.
Trust
Standing in the front row of Trust performing at Mohawk on Tuesday of SXSWÂ was one of the more memorable moments of the festival. The stage performance of Robert Alfons was phenomenal. After the first song, a local next to me said with wide eyes, “These guys are the next Crystal Castles.” Besides feeling like being teleported to the early 1980s stage of Robert Smith of The Cure, Alfons danced around in black skinny pants and entrancingly swayed side to side in performance. Trust is two piece Maya Postepski, also of Austra, and lead singer Robert Alfons. Maya was wearing white large oversized glasses and high wasted mom jeans while beating away at the drums. She had fantastic rock star personality and would, between songs, stare into the crowd and through her white glasses squint into the audience with intimidating stares, like challenging the audience of knowing how cool they really are.
Trust is a luring combo of synthpop and goth, that falls into the trendy niche of dance music that is hard to resist. Begging for comparisons to Crystal Castles because they are, like the former, also from Toronto, Trust combines bouncy rhythms, brushes them into light amounts of bass, drags them through bubblegum synth, and pollutes the airiness with dark, thick gothy clouds. Because I’m still mourning the sudden death of chillwave, however, and out of the fear their goth-synth stint might get boring, Trust needs an external motif to bolster their aesthetic sound and to separate them from the Crystal Castles cliches. Overall, their stage performance was one of the live best I saw at South By. But to ensure their lifespan within the industry, they should build in the mind of genre evolution so they’re not just extra padding on the cake.
