video 2011

Initial Friday’s highlights included Radio Moscow’s scorching six-strings and Atlas Sound’s muted musings but those were just a prelude to two of my favorites. The Crystal Stilts and A Place To Bury Strangers were both in top form; the former furnished a hazy psych-pop soundscape on the main stage before a distorted, feedback drenched aural assault by the latter A Place To Bury Strangers blew away all in attendance.

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The headliner was A Place To Bury Strangers, who completely rocked the place. Though they were not an official SXSW band, they were one of the best bands I saw during the whole week. Towards the end of their set guitarist/vocalist Oliver Ackerman slammed his guitar on the stage and then proceeded to rip all of the strings off of it, which left a few people with their mouths open.

So, I was thinking about this and trying to not to get too glum. I realized that instead of complaining, I could help by pointing to some papers which are easily available online and which (to me at least) point to some of the most interesting ideas about software. To me, these are classic papers which contain deep “things you oughta know” about code – the material you work with.

Trippy buzz bands such as the Wooden Ships, Dead Meadow and A Place to Bury Strangers join the aforementioned locals and dozens more, including Sky Sunlight Saxon of legendary Los Angeles garage rock titans the Seeds. Not too shabby for a festival that’s only on its second year.

Ah, if only every post-millennial goth band could sound like NYC’s A Place To Bury Strangers. These guys bring the darkness but back it up with a claustrophobi-noise-noir that hasn’t really been explored since we lost Ian Curtis and Bauhaus drifted away. Sure, everyone dogs the trappings of goth but APTBS really digs into the darkness in a fresh and less cliched way. They headline a festival of sorts at Radio Room in Austin Sunday night.

The fest is not, however, an exercise in flower-power nostalgia: indeed, this year’s lineup is a cross-reference of pretty much every modern sound that could possibly fall under the “psychedelic” banner, throwing together the blown-out futurism of Brooklyn’s A Place To Bury Strangers, the drug-mellowed West Coast fuzz of The Warlocks and Dead Meadow, the classic Vietnam-flashback drone of Wooden Shjips and The Black Angels, the synth freakness of Houston’s Indian Jewelry, and the jangly reverberations of Austin’s own The Strange Boys into one altogether intimidating package.

Sun(But that’s the Lord’s Day?):Psych Fest 2 with A Place to Bury Strangers (11:30pm), The Warlocks (10pm), The Strange Boys (9pm), Asteroid #4 (Philadelphia, 8pm), Forever Changes (Austin, 7pm), The Vandelles (NYC, 6pm),

A Place to Bury Strangers    

No times listed as of yet, but here are the bands in all of their glory. Please remember the earplugs for A Place to Bury Strangers.

Sunday is top-lined by the fuzzed out and fried-to-a-crisp clamor of A Place To Bury Strangers, psych-rock revival O.G.s The Warlocks, and New York’s Raveonettes-esque noir-poppers The Vandelles. Once again the entire festival will be set to Fillmore-era liquid light projections, psychedelic art from The Angels’ Christian Bland (and a few bongwater-soaked, vintage pieces rescued from the Vulcan Gas Company), and backed by “classic trip sequences” provided by I Luv Video and Austin Underground Film—hopefully including something from Peter Fonda’s embarrassingly bad “let’s get Jack Nicholson high and film it” opus The Trip.