SXSW

SXSW Song of the Day: Deathcrush – Lesson #16 for Beatmaster V / Fun

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Norway.

Aside from Fjords, their propensity to excel at the Winter olympics and overpriced everything, I don’t know a whole lot about them. I definitely don’t know a lot about their music scene. Enter Deathcrush. I mean, first of all. What a name. DEATHCRUSH! How does that not get you excited for everything and anything. A three piece band from Oslo, they are young, loud and brash. Their music just exudes cool. This video of one of their tracks has blown away any notion I might of had for young people in Norway. This might be one of the shows you go to at SXSW where at the end of it, you are like “I’m too old for this shit” but then maybe it’s just exactly what you need at the same time. I don’t know.

Throwback Thursday SXSW Song of the day: Coldplay – The Scientist

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coldplay

It’s hard to believe that it’s been well over a decade since a rainswept Chris Martin strolled off a shitty beach and into our consciousness with that inescapable song Yellow.

Since then he has married Gwyneth Paltrow, wrote political things on his hand, named his children Moses, Table, Apple, Gravy and Northeast and generally tried to become U2. Coldplay’s popularity has not suffered- in fact, it has exploded and they are probably one of the biggest bands in the world today.

it was announced on Wednesday that Coldplay was playing Sxsw as part of the ITunes festival and so it brings this band back into my view years after I had abandoned them. Which brings me back to reminisce about their classic song “The Scientist”.

Featuring Chris Martin’s trademark sad singing accompanied by a touching piano arrangement, The Scientist was a track off their second album that help propelled the band into super stardom. You know, for what it’s worth, this was a reasonable song. On top of that, it had a really good video and gave us the classic line “Nobody said it was easy/nobody said it was so hard” which I’ve used in at least several witty Facebook comment threads. I think most people know the lyrics to this song anyway. Anyways, Coldplay are playing SXSW, maybe they are trying to gain back some indie cred. Maybe Apple paid them a million dollars. Regardless, they will be in Austin, playing the gorgeous Moody Theatre, and probably inspiring a million tweets from former hipsters losing their shit over songs like this.

SXSW Song of the Day: Blue & Gold – It’s Only You

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bluegold

Brooklyn act Blue & Gold has this nice bluesy-rock vibe to them. They just recently released an self-titled EP and have been playing a lot of shows around New York, including one of my new favorite places – The Brooklyn Bowl. I hope Questlove paid them with Fried Chicken, cos that stuff was so, so delicious and I have noticed a lot of bands are really skinny. Maybe they aren’t skinny, maybe they are just malnourished. However, malnourished jeans wouldn’t really sell, so skinny it is.

Anyways, before I go even further off the cliff, their track, It’s Only You caught my ear. It’s got a nice guitar solo and yearning lyrics laid against a 50’s era rock backdrop. It makes me feel like this was a song Michael J Fox could sing in the movie Back to the Future to impress his future mother.

I think they are playing SXSW because they asked us if they could be on our showcase, which we really don’t have since we just go there to drink. Having said that, listen to their song.

SXSW Preview: The International Roster

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hyuna

It’s January! You know what this means? SXSW is excruciatingly close. This also means a lot of new bands being announced. Today marks the third round of bands that are announced and obviously there are a lot of bands to sift through. This year, I’ve decided to take a more international approach when looking at this current group of bands. Blame it on the Olympics.

HyunA (Korea)
Hyuna is a 21 year old South Korean pop star. She describes her music as “performance orientated music”. What does that mean? I don’t know. You might have seen her in Psy’s Gangnam Style video. Her is her own video It’s almost nsfw:

It’s some sort of hip hop music, I guess, and some of it is in English and has that Gwen Stefani-Holla Back girl vibe. I can guarantee you wherever she is playing, it will be a completely shitshow and that bar will contain basically every Korean in Texas. In other words, a hell of a good time.

HolySexyBastards (Venezuela)
This Venezuelan rock band sounds like Crispian Mills fronting the Black Keys. It’s actually pretty good in a dirty, dirty way.

Imarhan (Mali)
This is a group from Mali or Algeria, so you can bet Damon Albarn has already made friends with them. They have made quite a long trek over, so it might be worthwhile to see them.

La Canalla (Spain)
A band based out of Sevila, which just happens to be one of my favorite cities in Spain. The food there is fantastica and it is absolutely gorgeous. This group combines jazz, cabaret and Andalusian folk music. Basically, if you are at this showcase in Austin, you can close your eyes and pretend you are in Spain. Not a bad experience if you ask me.

Natig Rhythm Group (AZERBAIJAN)
From the country Azerbaijan, comes this poly rhythmic group. How can you resist a band that has this on their page:

natig
Words to live by indeed.

These few bands just highlight the sheer amount of diversity at SXSW. It’s not all just hipster Brooklyn bands or basement nerds with laptops. So I highly encourage you to go check out the lineup and find something truly interesting.

Round three list here