[Scotland] I was happy to run across this because I was looking to shake up my tired old same old taste in music. A little thuggish looking hooligan in a sideways cap DJing and captivating the weird crowd – mainstream clubbers, nerdy musicheads… I totally didn’t get it. He’d keep it kind of low, pick things up, the crowd would nod along anticipating the payoff, and then applaud. And this exact pattern went on and on. I liked it – I just didn’t get the subculture. I’m pretty sure it was dubstep. There was variety in what he played, which I liked, but the way he strung it together didn’t totally make sense to me. He played a more rap-sounding loop and three guys by the bar cheered and jumped like it was their own track. I’m pretty sure I didn’t’ deserve to be at this show.

[Manchester, England] Their music isn’t immediately striking but I loved this band. They’re the band I keep remembering out of the 30 I saw, and it doesn’t make sense because I don’t listen to music like this. They’re a boy and a girl, whitey white, blonde-y blonde. The guy wore a white shirt and black suit. The girl wore a tight black outfit, Robert-Palmer-girl style. They look like a rich couple who were dining and spontaneously broke into electronica. Or like step siblings who sleep together, like a scene from a Brett Easton Ellis novel or Cruel Intentions. The performance was cool calm and collected, as was the music. The guy was on an electronic drum pad and other electronic paraphernalia. The girl primarily sang but sometimes played electric guitar, Robert-Palmer-girl style. Their look matched their sound – clean, driving, pure vocals. She’s gorgeous, but her real appeal was the genuine quality to her voice, performance, and lyrics. She made you feel like she’s a perfect restrained person who is letting you into her personal world – like the feeling you get when you make a shy person smile or tell you their secrets. Cool and entrancing and true – I don’t think I would have been as impressed if I’d only heard them, but their show was excellent.

I’ve been mildly obsessed with this band since running across them at a SXSW. A tolerance for the imperfectability of live music is an accepted part of SXSW, and really live music viewing in general. This just didn’t apply for this band. They were slick as all hell, fancy and big – and I just loved them. It wasn’t just for all that, but also because they managed to combine 70s anthem rock with disco bass beats, and some serious light strobe action. It was a welcome relief from being indie sympathetic. So I’ve tracked this band’s live shows as I’ve tracked no others, but haven’t managed to see them when I was in Austin, in Colorado (of course), or even in Houston because they were touring so much. Turned out, my visit with Austin coincided with their visit with Austin. And then I really got to know the band. First impression: they share a lot of similarities with Chili Cold Blood, another Austin band I love for their heavy grooves and proggy funk. My music partner that night, WomanInCharge, pointed out that they sounded like the Allman Brothers, which upset me, because I was avoiding jam band music after my recent Colorado stint, but I realized she was absolutely right. This band was Southern rock (nothing wrong with that) and jam band. In fact, this explained my initial attraction to the band, because I cannot deny that I listen to southern rock when I’m alone in my closet. But this band went two ways. Sometimes, they were way too poppy and Black Keys, with their audience of pot smoking I’m-on-my-big-night-out-outside-of-tech-work audience, and then they’d draw on Led Zeppelin and be stoner excellent. They also have an electronica persona, very similar to Ghostland Observatory, as WomanInCharge correctly observed. In all, I feel conflicted about his band, which fits exactly with ThinLizzyLover’s observation from SXSW that he both loved and hated this band.

Two young, potentially very young, boys with man-size attitudes. Skinny baggy jeans (an amazing conquest of the modern day). One had a Puerto Rican flag draped over the front of his jeans- it was a little too flag-as-penis for me, but the mix of nationalism and machismo definitely worked for him. They bounded on stage yelling “Grito!” and laughed at themselves a little when they saw the tiny audience of parents and little kids (it was still early in the day). They rapped (in Spanish mostly) but with dance-melodic flow – there was most definitely some auto-tune in there, and what sounded to me like video game sounds. My 13-year-old niece could explain it better. They knew how to put on a show, backed by a girl in a net shirt half dancing/half stroking herself, and two somewhat awkward boys fly dancing. One tall slim dark woman with bleached hair danced the entire set with her Puerto Rican flag flying in the style of a high school drill team. It was entertaining and heartening.

The Simple Pleasure’s Chad Raines is some sort of bastard child of David Lee Roth and Hedwig (Flea seemed too obvious). The trio launched their thirty-minute set with a throbbing beat and a breathless energy that was nonstop from the minute they walked on to stage in track suits and stretched out, right down to the last note. That Chad can sing, play guitar and stumble across stage like he’s going through withdrawals all without missing a beat is impressive (and apparently he’s played Hedwig before). He knocked over a mic stand (at one point, dragging it with him across stage) and tossed flowers out into the audience like bullets shooting from a gun. My favorite song of their set was We’re Copasetic because it perfectly captured their punk aesthetic over a thumbing dance track with a little bit of glam thrown in for good measure.

after sitting next to their skilled guitar player during the bluegrass workshop, and seeing the respect he was paid, and hearing that they gig all over, I was expecting something great – well, I’ve never seen four men destroy such promising instruments like these four men did: upright bass, guitar, guitar, mandolin/fiddle – it was the weakest ass shit I had ever done seen in my life – the Yo La Tengo of whatever-you-want-to-call-their-music – I heard recently that the difference between the young and the old is that the old understand restraint, well the degree to which these guys have restraint mastered suggests they must be one step from the grave – they were particularly bad when they sang the lead vocalist’s own songs – he’d simper as he described them and they were these cheesy trite bland horrors – I swear he’s trying to turn a church band into a pop band – his voice is weak too, sometimes John Denver, usually church folk – it was the ultimate irony when he was trying to express how he’s changing the world with his music and stated “Nothing speaks louder than music” – the one time they were tolerable was when my guitar man sang – ironically, I feel like their sound has some promise if they would only play more interesting songs– I’ve honestly never seen these instruments handled like they did – they could do ambient bluegrass or something– they also played the song that I hear everywhere I go in Gunnison and will forever consider the theme song of Gunnison: “Wagonwheel” – turns out it’s a song for which Dylan wrote the chorus and never recorded, and then Old Crow Medicine Show wrote verses around it and made it hugely famous… in Gunnison

Joe Hahn (of Linkin Park) was a guest DJ on Saturday at Haze. The nightclub, in the basement of the Aria on the Las Vegas Strip, caters primarily to radio-friendly dance music with a revved BPM. So it was a noticeable and immediate shift in tone when Hahn took the reins at 12:30am. He massaged Linkin Park’s nu metal vibe with techno and only the occasional nod to pop or dance. Hahn infused a mix of songs ranging from the Go-Go’s Our Lips Our Sealed, LL Cool J’s Mama Said Knock You Out and a extremely deconstructed take on Pumped Up Kicks from Foster the People. Hahn’s approach was sublimely artful – probably not a common thing in a Las Vegas nightclub – and controlled but it lacked the invitation to dance that drew the crowd into Haze to begin with.

[Chatsworth, CA] exuberant techno – one man behind the controls – he was good until he did a sunshiney song with electronic vocals – best part was when the crowd parted near me and everyone was staring at the ground – I got nervous someone was Down and was kind of tip-toeing to see what was going on – it was an exploding energy drink that all the boys were too scared to pick up

this is an inappropriate and rude review, but I am open to the criticisms of people who know better – it’s inappropriate because I saw only a little bit of each performance but the little bits I saw were an introduction into a world of music that I didn’t know people participated in, especially live – Derek Morgan was literally a guy at his keyboard playing what seemed to be a single sad note, made bands I’ve called monotone in the past sound downright lively – AMASA GANA was a full band playing at -40x speed – you had time to watch the violinist pull his bow across the strings and then turn your head to catch the guitarist change frets – Fennesz, on the other hand, came highly recommended, actually beat out CocoRosie as the “recommended” show for the night, but I was done with this room by that time the entire staff of the place where we go for music trivia came to see Fennesz and loved him so it’s clearly a personal issue – I maintain still that these “bands” were the definition of minimalism and as close to being comatose as you can hope to be without extra help

[Los Angeles, CA] we had never heard or heard of this band but were there because I’d won free tickets through an Emo’s contest for naming your favorite show you’d ever seen at Emo’s and describing why – pretty much the contest I’d been waiting for since the day I moved to Austin – I spotted the photographer for the Statesman’s A-list in the crowd early on which was a plus since it’s a sign that the event is at least minorly significant, but a negative because the bastard, once again, didn’t care to take my photo – on the other hand, though, the Chronicle had recommended the opening and local band, Pure Ecstasy, which was pretty much a slap in the face to Autolux – so they started off kind of average-sounding, which is dangerous for a band I don’t know – without a remarkable sound and with songs I don’t know, I’m at high risk of being bored – but I quickly became mesmerized – some of their songs had a 90s noise rock sound, which confirms my suspicion that the kids are on their way to reviving the 90s instead of the 80s, also confirmed by the number of NIN t-shirts I’ve been seeing around lately, and flannel shirts – anyway, there was also a shoegaze element, in the quiet repetitiveness – some suggestion of synth – it was all very simple, drum, bass, and guitar – there wasn’t a lot of to-do or hijinx – but their very calmness and seeming maturity suggested that they knew they didn’t need that extra fluff – I think they might be better live than recorded but, in general, this band pleases me greatly

[Essex, UK] I don’t see a lot of electronic or DJ shows but always find them exciting – it was one guy, in a hoodie I believe, with an Apple and other gadgets that mystify me – he started out so ambient I kept wondering if the show had actually started – then things picked up and he put on the heavy beats with dirty trills on top of it – this I like but I don’t even know how to talk about it – the mood of the audience was completely transformed: all rapt attention and dancey – it was interesting what drew response from the kids, very different from a rock show or maybe not, basically whenever he’d pause and then break back into it or when he’d do some fancy work with the scratchy top-notes – the bass was so heavy and loud it hurt my heart, seriously disturbs me and always has – electronic music always makes me wonder how do they do it? why do they do it? what does it all mean for the larger picture of humanity?

[Austin, TX] I really liked this band but then I really like shoegaze, at least some of it (basically The Stone Roses) – the band was tucked into one corner of the stage basically playing to each other – unassuming in plaid shirts – well-paced, sweet, and dense

[Knoxville, TN] on my and Rockboy\”s lists – it was just too cold to listen properly – they were fine but I was more impressed by WhoMadeWho – this band was similar, electro-rock, but they were more indie and less bombast – this band deserves more listen

[Copenhagen, Denmark] it was so fiercely cold, I was out of my mind, but from what I could tell, this band was fantastic – three in-synch dance rocking guys from Denmark – they played hard-driving precise disco rock – they joked when they switched form dance rock to electro rock that they were stepping back a year

[Vancouver, Canada] this show was so hilarious I could hardly stand it and it wasn’t even intentional but a perfect storm of the setting and the band and the audience – so I had this band listed as a mid-level possible show from my research but we decided to go because Rockboy had heard that SPIN listed them as 1 of 7 top unheard bands – and because we were exhausted and it was close to where we were – so it’s the worst venue ever, a little alcove in a crappy Mexican restaurant with timid waitresses crossing right in front of the stage throughout the entire set – the first audience members to arrive were two pre-pubescent boys who were totally subdued but clearly thrilled to be at a rock show – they tried to stand as coolly as they could which amounted to being totally stiff and uncomfortable except for when they’d shake their heads to shag out the hair as 00s middle school boys do – the band was unremarkable looking except that the female co-vocalist had crazy curls and a cute little body and an obviously fun attitude AND the lead singer was a dead ringer for Jack Black – he was genuinely funny, talking to the crowd with his little Canadian accent and apologizing for the band’s drunkenness – the band sounded like a pretty decent version of The Faint and a frumpy stocky jokey guy fronting them was just an incongruous fit: he’d switch from stomping his feet and hopping around with his voice altered into a robot’s voice to telling us stories about beavers from Canada – plus, being drunkish and all on Texas margaritas, he’d step into the – crowd of 10 people and sing in their faces or follow the waitresses around – he was so cute and harmless, it was like a family mixer instead of a rock show – when he stomped up right in front of the 2 boys, they did their best to look unmoved even though it was clear they were simultaneously horrified and thrilled – when he danced in front of the mid-teen emo-girl, she totally lost it and actually broke her aloofness to giggle – when he danced after the waitresses, they screamed a little and hurried faster on their way – when he strayed into the rooms of the restaurant where people were eating, he was totally ignored and returned to the stage a little defeated – his antics (and the great music) eventually drew a crowd of 15-20 people but it seemed to be people who’d been dining there for the most part – but suddenly everybody was dancing including the kid with flip flops and a backpack on and the curly haired girl with a military jacket and the sweet laughing woman with her boyfriend – at one point, he had to yell at his bandmate who had joined the dancing crowd, “Hey, you’re in the band, remember?!” – so, in sum, I say listen to this band, but recorded rather than live, because otherwise you’ll just laugh

[Copenhagen, Denmark] the music was good (disco pop rock) but they were remarkable because of the lead singer – she was a gorgeous tiny blonde girl with a neon pink outfit and about 100 necklaces and a knowing sneer of a smile and she actually could sing – maybe a modern Debbie Harry – they had two horns, keyboard, guitars.

[New York, NY] queer culture band – I kind of loved them – so odd looking I thought they were clueless foreigners but I think that’s their intention – crazy lyrics like how it’s really expensive to buy babies so s/he’s just going to “fuck all her friends” until she has a little baby – it sounds crass but s/he made it cute – electronic disco punk

[West Palm Beach, FL] four guys pounding on keyboards, guitars and drums to create a head-bobbing passionate electro rock – they also pay attention to the hook in their melodies – bouncy, happy but serious, good band

[Bergen, Norway] – it was a SXSW 2009 reunion with CameraSmoothie and one of our top bands – I remembered not liking them at first and then loving them, which was pretty much the same experience I had this time – it\”s because they start off with sweet-little-boy shuffling electronica (which I have come to like) but end rowdy dirty synth

[Philadelphia, PA] – two white guys with a very East coast working class look – I thought that they were going to be rappers but ended up being some weird amalgam of punk, electronica and hip-hop – the frenzied audience seemed to already know them – didn\”t quite like them but they were interesting

Depeche Mode ripped through an impressive set during their Boston-area stop of the Tour of the Universe. The band, Martin Gore, Dave Gahan and Andy Fletcher plus two backing musicians, tore through a hits-heavy set drenched in dance grooves. They transformed their songs into club classics and it was a shame that the show wasn’t at a standing-room only venue. Instead, it was at the craptastic Comcast Center in Mansfield 20 miles south of Boston on a rainy, humid day with people crammed into their seats, bouncing along as best they could without whacking a person around them.

The stage was set in a wash of lights with an enormous disco ball mounted above the band that acted as a secondary projection screen. The images though, were more distracting than illuminating, especially in light of the pure sound that turned electronic classics like Policy of Truth and Enjoy the Silence into pulsing techno tracks. Gahan’s voice, which has never been that fluid, held up well. Though granted, he let the audience do the singing on the chorus of a song more than once (kind of a cheap trick, that is, but then he’s always taken some vocal breaks down their shows).

DM opened with three songs from the new album, In Chains, the sinister and superb Wrong and Hole to Feed. From there, they turned over the show to classic and current hits from the exceptional stripped-down version of the Gore-sung Home to one of DM’s best post-Violator tracks It’s No Good and their recent smash Precious. They closed the main set with Never Let Me Down Again and went way back for the encore with Stripped and Master and Servant.

Depeche Mode setlist
In Chains
Wrong
Hole To Feed
Walking In My Shoes
It’s No Good
A Question Of Time
Precious
Fly On The Windscreen
Little Soul
Home
Come Back
Policy Of Truth
In Your Room
I Feel You
Enjoy The Silence
Never Let Me Down Again
Encore
Stripped
Master And Servant
Strangelove
Encore 2
Personal Jesus

Burnt Fur’s second show in a month was in the seedy underbelly of the Cantab Lounge, a place optimistically referred to as the Club Bohemia. Burnt Fur nailed an hour long set with their signature mix of electronic beats and industrial edge. The band was brilliant, tackling the jangly new wave track Redux and the sound effects-heavy Pixelated Black with the same aplomb. It took a couple of songs to find their groove, but once it clicked with the track Warm All Day from their first LP release Unfurl , the energy levels shot through the ceiling.

Fronted by Scott Harrison, he managed to channel his inner Siouxsie Sioux even on a minuscule stage at the Cantab. The foursome traded off guitar duties during their set and sole female Jean Kennedy even took a vocal turn on a sublime cover of The Cure rarity The Upstairs Room. Rounded out by Ian St. Germain and Patrik Tirda, the band pays homage to their pop sensibilities on tracks like Radiate. But the real highlight of the evening was the triumphant new track, Reverie, slated for their upcoming EP release later this summer.

Burnt Fur setlist
Strange Vacation
Radiate
Warm All Day
Redux
Reverie
The Upstairs Room
Cats
Homage
Vitriol
Pixelated Black

Burnt Fur were awesome. Why they were playing at Ramrod, a leather bar, I don’t know (on recommendation of a DJ that works there if the stories are true.) The band found a credible vibe between the Cure (which they credited as an influence) and Siouxsie and the Banshees.

The entire set was polished, high energy songs that walked the fine line between punk and new wave. Songs like Warm All Day were at one end of the spectrum while a track like Cats was at the vast other end. But it all worked.

The band traded off instruments and vocal duties and far surpassed expectations in the decidedly un-Ramrod crowd. A cover of The Glove’s Orgy sealed the deal. A magnificent performance.

I LOVED it – reminded me of the sounds of the rave scene in Vegas in the late 90s – all spare electronic sound with the intense build-ups and break-downs of DJ Jean’s “The Launch” – seemed to just be one guy on a computer but the crowd was hyperkinetic like ants

she was the rapper I’d come to see (part of the British grime scene) and she wasn’t quite what I expected – I pictured a wannabe type gangster girl, more pretty than tough, but she was far more “legit” than the two female rappers before her: small intense-looking white girl in baggy clothes, baseball cap, snarly rapping, etc. – you can’t help but be totally sucked into her world: Eminem-like phrasing and attitude, cockney accent, and total stage dynamism and mastery – lots of silly posturing but I loved her – she could rap fast and plays in interesting twists with her words and her voice – her DJ samples a lot, including American music, and can go from kooky noises to harder synth walls – am currently considering my rapper potential

all-class sultry deep-voiced black girl rapping over groovy electronic big-bass DJ tracks – another bad ass – her music was harder and she was better than Amanda Blank – girl power begins to surge in the room

three girls with long lank brown hair on three keyboards in a row – standing and singing in little girl voices – about as exciting as you\”d imagine – they weren’t bad but so innocent they made me feel dirty just looking at them

this band was a breath of fresh air after rock overload – tiny black boy with polo shirt and giant smile singing – another black boy with dreads, gapped teeth, and abercrombie-style clothes on ??? – silly white boy with plastic animals glued to his t-shirt and plastic sunglasses on the keyboard – they were electronic hipsters interlaced with warm authentic African touches – the singer was all positivity and would switch from African style hymns to reggae to pure pop – the first song sampled M.I.A. and I would say their sound is fairly comparable to hers – perhaps the best part of the band were the two black female dancers in rainbow-colored clothing – one was skinny but the big girl had all the moves and no shame – the crowd was all young awkward white hipster kids and, at one point, the big girl put her hands on the hips of a shy white girl in the front and made her move them – we agreed though that there\”s something unsatisfying about a group without a single musician

I went from hating this band to adoring them: a lesson in the value of staying for an entire set – it was more keyboard hell: they had a whole network of them (4?) with 3 guys managing them – guitar and drums too – everybody had on those fluorescent plastic sunglasses the kids like – initial impressions: like one of those clap bands – ambient electronic – yawn – then they started looping in video game sounds and then they started sounding like The Unicorns (which is a good thing) – and then there was disco and wah wah – I don’t know enough about electronic music to say but there’s a certain deep wall of undertone screech they can do that I really like – suddenly they were The Chemical Brothers and I began to adore them – there were some authentic pounding club moments but they tended to emphasize the goofy rather than the intensity but the intensity was there – the interesting thing about them to me was that they were a mix of an electronic band and a band-band – additionally, the vocals were dissonant with the music in some ways (kind of an indie rock complaint style) but once I got up and started watching them it made more sense – they also put on a great stage show, throwing microphones in a call and response across the stage to each other!

sped-walk nearly two miles across town to make it to this band my littlest sister had recommended – arrived to find out they were only admitting badge people (SXSW caste system) – I slunk over to listen from the outside knowing there were few other venues in this part of town – I must have looked defeated because the doorman waved me over and admitted me without explanation – most packed show I’d been too and the crowd was jumping before the band even started – literally – four 20-somethings next to me jumped in tandem for twenty minutes before the band had started – they had to have been high but their enthusiasm was hilarious – Kim plays drums and Matt’s on the keyboard – I was a little shocked at this seemingly new genre of music that I was entirely oblivious to: electronic punk? – would call it synth punk but that would group them with my beloved bands that are dark and sleazy which is the polar opposite of Matt & Kim – they were cheerful and hyper to the point that I thought they might be a Christian rock band, especially with Kim’s creepy perma-grin and Matt’s feel-good messages to the crowd – the crowd was nuts over them, crowdsurfing, and I cocked my head at this generation who had grown up so immersed in electronics that this was the music that felt real to them – the crowd and the band were in perfect harmony

Another instance of my distorted perspective of band popularity – I realized in the morning that not marking this band as my #1 for the day had been an oversight but I doubted that we’d even get in because they were so huge… … we were one of thirty people maybe on a distinctly uncrowded patio. Don’t know if it was the day, the time, or if I really have no sense of band status, in my own little world of total music access. Anyway, they were fantastic. They sounded less electronic live than they do recorded. They’re just high-quality textured indie rock with pleasingly quirky twists in the riffs and the vocals. The lead singer was endearing and enthusiastic with his one feather earring. The crowd was mostly young gay males but I think it was more a function of the neighborhood than the band, though the feather earring gives me pause. They ended with their HUGE HIT “Ghetto Ways.” Well, their #1 fan, at least, was very pleased.

We’re all bickering on a hot street: WomanInCharge on crutches and no cabs in sight. Two of us head off towards busier corners to find a taxi when what to our wondering eyes should appear, but an oddly shaped taxicab coming so near. We whooped, climbed in and shortly realized that this was no normal taxi. It was shaped like a big box, had a stripper’s pole and fluorescent lighting. Even better, there was an interactive jukebox-style touch screen with a wealth of music videos from the 70s to 00s to choose from. 3 to 4 TV screens allowed a clear view for every passenger. The kind of random magic that only happens during SXSW or anytime of the year for the lucky few who know to call 512-626-TAXI.