shall i turn that up a little for you?

March 1, 2005 3:01 AM

Happy 10th Birthday "What? is Music".

This year's the 10th time around the block for Australian festival "What? is Music", which showcases new (and not so new), unusual, fascinating and strange directions in contemporary music and sound exploration.

Starting today such outfits as The Residents, Dead C., Black Dice, Chicks on Speed, and members of Boredoms and Sun City Girls tour Sydney, Melbourne and Brisbane.

Labels like Last Visible Dog, Touch, ElectrO-CD and Corpus Hermeticum are represented, and last year's festivities saw Whitehouse and Merzbow rip up the stage.

So MeFites, what other events are there out there like this that have tickled your collective pickles? Which festivals or bands have unduly influenced your aural development and/or rearranged your head musicwise?
posted by soi-disant (16 comments total)

i'm looking forward to the show next week !
posted by Burgatron at 3:09 AM on March 1, 2005

Unfortunately it looks as if '04 was the last one but Splore was one of the best I've ever been to. And I've been to Burning Man(s), Glastonbury(s), Thai Full Moon parties and the like.

Splore had the cream of NZ electonic music - the likes of Fat Freddy's Drop, Minuit, Pitch Black, Trinity Roots and many more - in a beautiful setting in Waharau Regional Park opposite the Coromandel Peninsula, with some excellent art & culture thrown in. If they ever do get round to doing another one I'll travel from the UK specially.

New Zealand music kicks ass.
posted by i_cola at 3:53 AM on March 1, 2005

no fun
posted by brevator at 4:31 AM on March 1, 2005

There are so very little local festivals here that ever hit me really hard. The Movement Festival may or may not happen again here in detroit, and that hardly shook my bowels last year. Historically the original Techno things that have come out of Detroit changed my life, but these days it all feels stale.

The stuff that came out of Manchester in the early 90's felt just as revolutionary to my ears. In particular, the things displayed on the "Artificial Intelligence" album and the music Warp Records had been releasing at the time hit me as very original. In fact, they hit me hard enough to skew what i wanted to make. Echoes of the early Warp and SKAM records artists can be found in my own creations even today.
posted by phylum sinter at 5:31 AM on March 1, 2005

for me, nothing affected me the way the first ever plan-it-x fest did. intended as a 10th birthday party for one of my favorite labels, it not only presented me with plenty of amazing music, but opened my eyes to the way we could all live if we wanted, and the way all festivals should be run. last year's took place in bloomington indiana, but this year, they're buying a bus, loading everyone on and touring the country.
more information can be found here.
posted by Lusy P Hur at 5:40 AM on March 1, 2005

Damnit I want to see The Residents so freakin bad! Unfortunately, they never tour anywhere near where I live (Texas) and I can never afford to go anywhere they are playing.

Re: the post more directly.
Never been a big fan of music festivals. Any big festival I've ever gone to has had maybe 2 acts that I want to see who only play for 30 min anyway, a bunch of crap that I *don't* want to see, and you pay $50 for the experience of standing in a field and being overcharged for water and food. That said, this looks like a pretty cool music festival. Sort of like what SXSW used to be, but unfortunately isn't anymore: something that actually showcases new and different music, rather than the same big acts you can see anywhere.
posted by papakwanz at 6:50 AM on March 1, 2005

Which festivals or bands have unduly influenced your aural development and/or rearranged your head musicwise?

I was in Washington DC to visit a friend last month and caught the "Noise Against Facism" lineup at the Black Cat:

MIRROR/DASH (Kim Gordon/Thurston Moore), THE BELIEVERS, METALUX, DOUBLE LEOPARDS, 16 BITCH PILEUP, MONOTRACT, NAUTICAL ALMANAC, BUZZARDSTAIN (Nate Young/Twig Harper), CHRIS CORSANO/PAUL FLAHERTY, TO LIVE AND SHAVE IN L.A. (Rat Bastard, Don Fleming, Chris Grier, T. Moore, Tom Smith, Ben Wolcott, Andrew W.K.), MAGIK MARKERS

Needless to say I was disappointed that the two bands I wanted to see (Lightning Bolt & Wolf Eyes) were the two who canceled!

I'd die to visit Australia to see the Dead C, though :>
posted by jenleigh at 7:07 AM on March 1, 2005

Planet Mu and just about all the labels in their links section (especially tigerbeat6) have been putting out some great stuff lately. dropthelime, The Venetian Snares, knifehandchop, and dev/null are some of my favorite artists that frequent those labels. Brainwashed has some really good stuff, the DVDs in particular cover some great, obscure bands. Lately, I've really been enjoying Devendra Banhart (who I found via one of the aforementioned DVDs). Negativland still makes me concurrently laugh, think and enjoy myself. Between their writing on IP issues, their radio show and their art, they've influenced me a lot, and they're coming out with a new CD/book soon!
posted by nTeleKy at 7:44 AM on March 1, 2005

jenleigh, soi-disant: I happened to notice that there's video of both Wolf Eyes and Black Dice (coincidentally on the same page) available via brainwashed; just thought I'd point it out since they're mentioned. Great post, BTW; I wish I could go...
posted by nTeleKy at 8:12 AM on March 1, 2005

The Wire/Empty Bottle Adventures in Modern Music.
posted by kenko at 8:23 AM on March 1, 2005

Play some Skynyrd man!
posted by bardic at 8:34 AM on March 1, 2005

ok
posted by freebird at 10:36 AM on March 1, 2005

The once yearly, but now seemingly not-so-yearly Terrastock, organized by the Ptolemaic Terrascope.

Got many, many fine memories of the 1997 show in S.F.; the Azuza Plane, Damon and Naomi with Ghost (a particularly moving bit as I had been through a low point in life and as they were playing I suddenly realized I was able to have fun again), the MASSIVE Bardo Pond set and the closing freak out by ol' Brother JT and Vibrolux.

Mind soaking.
I'll never, ever ferget it.
posted by asparagus_berlin at 10:47 AM on March 1, 2005

i_cola: splore looks hot. i love nz music. birchville cat motel is on particularly high rotation at my house right now.

nTeleKy: brainwashed it great. thanks for the link to the vid - i'd never noticed it before.

everyone: thanks for pointing me at some new and varied sounds and events. hopefully i'll get a chance to see some more of them whilst stateside this year...

and Burgatron: i'll see you there mate.
posted by soi-disant at 3:09 PM on March 1, 2005

I had a blast at Bonaroo in 2003 when The Dead headlined the show. I'm not even that much of a fan of jam bands or their scene, but the festival just had a great vibe to it (not overly restrictive, three days of camping in a field in Tennessee and 24/7 music). Of course, dropping acid on my 20th birthday at a Flaming Lips show where they sang me happy birthday in front of thousands of people and then proceeded to cover Pink Floyd's Dark Side of the Moon album probably influenced my overall opinion of the festival.

Coachella was also fun, and was more oriented at my musical taste (although this year's lineup isn't nearly as good), but it had a much more commercial "feel" to it than Bonaroo. It also was unbearably hot during the day and the food/water was damn expensive. Still, seeing Radiohead in the middle of the desert was a blast.
posted by rooftop secrets at 3:48 PM on March 1, 2005

Uh...I saw The Ramones at the SIU Student Center in 1980...


...now I listen to NPR
posted by jaronson at 9:35 PM on March 1, 2005