SXSW – Day Two

Delorean, !!! and Flume

Sixth Street Vibes:

It was a mixed day of musical fortunes. More mixed than a bag of nuts in a gypsy’s clammy grasp. 6th Street was awash with opportunists and it was from this noisy crucible that we saw one of the best live bands of the day: a duo of gorgeous female double bass player along with gnarled banjo and kick drum player. Who knew that such primitive means would deliver such heavenly compositions. Sadly the daily currents were moving to fast to ever establish their name but they wrought three dollars from our pockets in celebration of their endeavours. May such banjo playing reverberate with us once more.

On the bottom end of this 6th Street polarity were the ‘Immortal Guardians’ – categorically the worst, most musically retarded, ineffectual and ultimately quiet band of the week. If this was guerrilla gigging, then we were reliving a particularly violent butchering of gorilla’s in the mist. They could have shouted louder than their pathetic microphone suggested, and their feeble PA had given up the ghost long ago meaning their digital drum kit was a puppet of an instrument. Only their greasy mosh had the remotest hint of interest.

Dolorean – 10.30pm – Clive’s Bar

These Catalonian heroes had wasted no time in raising their psychedelic spectres from their joyously danceable ground. As ever their modular cacophony was a treat to witness, a party on stage with much kinetic twists and turns of their pulsating bodies. Perhaps their over liberal use of sample pads and airhorns could be curtailed but that could easily dampen their livid party. Increasingly this Barcelonan band are distanced from their roots but their party seems like it won’t be stopping for a while.

!!! – 11pm – Clive’s Bar

New York’s finest punk funkateers smashed onstage at Clive’s Bar with a scream. Singer Nic Offer was crawling with sexed up dance moves and a hunger to goad and enliven all those around him. In fact, he was the most electric character of the day, in a city on fire with music, with many an ego ablaze on the stage. Nic Offer strutted, he cajoled, he climbed speaker stacks, he jiggled his balls from inside just a pair of Disney boxer shorts in the face of a female fan before he goaded a male fan by playing chicken with a snog. At points it was hard to look beyond his isolationist performance, such was the strength of his character and wonky dance clique. He appeared like a cross between Pat Bateman of the American Psycho, a World Cup streaker and one of Madonna’s voguing backing dancers with a sex addiction. The new single ‘Slyd’ from new LP ‘Thr!!!er’ went down an absolute storm as the bands melodramatic funk danced us into the night.

Flume – 1.00am – Latitude 30

One man with a fresh face and a dweeby haircut turned Austin’s bass fiends upside down tonight. Flume aka Harley Streten is boisterously taking the best elements of dreamy electro pop, the most visceral bin busting wobble of dubstep

and the aplomb of shattered and cut up rap and melding them into his own channel of sound. Like Flylo before him he’s happy to take mobile ideas and pin the static history of rap upon them, a heady mix for American’s whose collective hunger for straight up dance music still fails to ignite whole clubs, rather just a hardcore minority. Flume’s however had the raving majority in the palm of his hands tonight.

Blending half step nouse, samples from Kendrick Lamar and splendid fruity bursts of sonics his dish was one enjoyed red hot. As happy doling out lumbering shards of sound as hammering out staccato, truncated fragments of dreams over low clacks and hi-hats – it was a set that saw him cut through the debate that’s raged all week about Austin on ‘EDM’ and actually just made a load of people happy in dancing. Flume, we’re happy on your ride.

Words by Matthew Bennet & Joe Zadeh

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