SCHED* SXSW 2011

Adam & Alma is a young electro duo from Stockholm, Sweden. The duo consists of Ellen Arkbro and Johan Graden and was formed in the spring of 2009, only a couple of months after their very first meeting. They released the EP Back to the sea in March this year. The EP is a collection of the first songs they made together. Right after the release, you were able to hear their songs on the Swedish radio. Adam & Alma recently received a great fellowship, from the Swedish Society STIM, to work with a full length album. They are now collaborating with the South American pop-producer Juan Campodónico (Bajofondo Tango Club) and will guest on his first solo album.
http://schedule.sxsw.com/events/event_MS13894

Chimes and Bells released their first EP ”Into Pieces Of Wood” in 2009 on Tigerspring Records and it led to a contract with the UK label Bella Union. In the following year Chimes and Bells played numerous industry festivals, for instance By:larm and SPOT. In October 2010 they released their debut album ”Chimes and Bells” on Tigerspring Records, which will be internationally released in 2011. In the fall of 2010 the band supported Trentemoller on a 3 week european tour.
http://schedule.sxsw.com/events/event_MS13610

Woodsman is an experimental ambient post-psychedelic band based in Denver, CO. The quartet contains two totemic percussionists and two sonic animators who employ electric guitars, feedback loops, and recorded samples to build the dreamy astral soundscapes that define Woodsman’s sound. Influenced by hazy mountain passes, the cinema of Stan Brakhage, and early 1970’s improvisational recordings by Miles Davis Woodsman has crafted aural offerings that are uniquely their own.
http://schedule.sxsw.com/events/event_MS12108

Warm Ghost : Claws Overhead EP Paul Duncan is currently recording and performing under the moniker Warm Ghost. It finds him taking a step beyond traditional instrumentation and one toward that of electronics, synthesizers, drum machines and processed field recordings. Warm Ghost has now evolved into a band in collaboration with Oliver Chapoy, where the sound is an intricately arranged shimmering sonic world of twisting words and melodies inside dense environments where there are elements of 80's new wave, cold wave and synth pop from Solid Space to OMD to Depeche Mode, late 70's disco, synth programming sharing ground with Autechre and AFX, and experimental textures
reminiscent of Fennesz. The payoff is beautifully executed, lush pop songs that beg for repeat listening. Paul has also collaborated with numerous other artists including Oren Ambarchi (SunnO))), Type Records), Joe Stickney (Bear in Heaven), Chris Bear (Grizzly Bear), RobertoLange (Helado Negro), Fred Lonberg-Holm ( Jim O'Rourke, Boxhead Ensemble), David Daniell (Rhys Chatham’s Essentialist, San Agustin) and Doug McCombs (Tortoise, Brokeback) among others. Warm Ghost released it's debut EP, "Claws Overhead", on the label Geographic North on May 11th, 2010 and is now recording a follow-up full-length.
http://schedule.sxsw.com/events/event_MS13623

Reeking havoc.
http://schedule.sxsw.com/events/event_MS13568

She sounds like she might have been born a coal miner’s daughter in Butcher Hollow, Kentucky, or maybe grown up next door to her daddy’s blacksmith forge outside Winchester, Virginia. But while Zoe Muth (pronounced Mewth) has the authentic honky tonk angel aura of Loretta Lynn and Patsy Cline in her voice, she’s the woman who is helping to turn Seattle, Washington, from the capital of grunge into a north‐west heartland of purest Americana. Zoe’s songs about cold‐hearted beaux, faithless love and her own ability to serially pick the ones who swear they won’t but always wind up making her blue, follow in the classic country tradition and her band of top notch pickers ‐ The Lost High Rollers ‐ including mandolinist Ethan Lawton, pedal steel guitarist and dobro boss Dave Harmonson and banjo man Jason Stewart, frame every story with suitably sobbing lines, tough‐as‐nails vigour and a rockin’ bar‐room beat. She started teaching herself to play the guitar in high school, found role models in Bob Dylan and Woody Guthrie and graduated to include influences such as Texas country‐blues poet Townes Van Zandt, from whose song No Lonesome Tune she appropriated her backing band’s name. The debut album, Zoe Muth and The Lost High Rollers was greeted like good ole blue collar manna by country music fans who had grown tired of having their odes to heartbreak popified and their tales of crying tears into beers click‐tracked to anaemic perfection. On its Stateside release, it shot straight to the Number 1 position on the hugely‐influential FAR Chart, compiled from returns submitted by DJs with freeform (no playlists) radio shows on public, college and community stations, indicating coast‐to‐coast acknowledgement of something great. No surprise as Zoe’s the real‐deal, shooting from the hip and delivering country aces from a straight deck.
http://schedule.sxsw.com/events/event_MS11773

Duet driven folk-noir from Seattle. Previous work on SubPop, Sony, and Frontier. Longtime rock writers and friends, Rusty Willoughby (Flop, Pure Joy) and Rachel Flotard (Visqueen, Neko Case) collaborate with notable musicians from Seattle to Denmark. Features members of Screaming Trees, R.E.M., Afghan Wigs, and The Tripwires. Touring US 2011.
http://schedule.sxsw.com/events/event_MS11630

"Sometimes as darkly damaged as Lucinda Williams, at others as defiant and teasing as prime Peggy Lee and always authentically Americana in the Gillian Welch tradition.... She's mighty good." - LA Daily News Boise-born and Boston-based, Eilen Jewell has quickly distinguished herself as one of the rising stars of a new generation of roots musicians. Through relentless touring and her three critically acclaimed albums released on Signature Sounds, Jewell has developed a legion of fans. Featuring a rugged blend of Americana styles, her understated yet insightful songs have been heard on HBO, ABC, CMT and on Ralph Lauren's Spring Collection video. Jewell and her longtime band of Jason Beek (drums, harmony vocals), Jerry Miller (electric, acoustic, and steel guitars), and Johnny Sciascia (upright bass) wed her elegantly unflinching songwriting with a rustic, pre-Beatles swagger that encapsulates vintage R&B, Midwestern garage rock, Chicago blues, and early rock and rockabilly, while maintaining the haunting, folk-inspired purity that first made her an artist to watch. Eilen Jewell will release her fourth solo effort in Summer 2011 on Signature Sounds with tours in the US, Europe, UK and Australia to follow. This new album of dark, sparsely arranged songs about love, loss and redemption is driven by Eilen's powerful vocals and her evocative lyrics. Eilen's minor key blues and surf cinematic vibe is supported by her long-time road band and punctuated by an all-star cast of guest artists.
http://schedule.sxsw.com/events/event_MS11435

j roddy walston is not soft like someone born into privilege, but he does bear the hesitant scars of a man who fought his way out of a pedigree. yoked from day one to a musical lineage that included “both kinds of music – country and gospel.” he was told with regularity that it was close to sin to play either for any reason but God and Family. and that when the city comes courting with contracts and such he was expected to follow tradition…and walk away. “a weight is kindly put upon you with a heritage, and a choice comes to you in time, at that point you can just become an extension or you can get born and grow legs of you own.” it is a stranger south that j roddy walston lived in, a place where radio gave equal ear to classic rock, hell-fire evangelists, and the elephant six. powered and inspired by this mixture of art, spirit, and temptation he left home, in as much an attempt to bring his kin due credit as to rebel against the very things they had stood for. he followed a girl north enough, and landed in baltimore with a low budget sense of manifest destiny and a handful of high dollar songs. an undecided magnet started to draw to him a group of players. first came the challenge and compliment of billy gordon a musical mirror-image of j roddy and then steve colmus a sportly southpaw with a heavy snare hand. in them raw power met story and neither would compromise. they felt a city squeeze. they formed an intangible thumb, and they them turned into a fist. knowing good and well that you can predict a purebred, j roddy walston and the business opted to create a monster of the unknown, they threw what seed and egg they had into an american grab bag and hit the road. bending highways and rearranging maps to their fancy, making a different america for itself. vision casting a strange view of the states to all who would listen, their agenda seems to be some sort of anti-secession, a growing over, rather than a breaking away. a ceaseless expansion of the world where the rust belt and bible belt have been grown together to form a rock and roll quilt that knows no end. i have seen their world. they perform in a place where the hedonists and believers are cut from the same cloth. well-educated blue collars from busted boom towns forced to school when the factory option was taken away. blue bloods working for a dime instead of taking the family money. renters and owners, evangelicals and recovering Catholics, nine to fivers and the service industry. they all touch there. i stumbled through a one way door. i now have a knowledge of these beatnik/honkey tonks and i can’t seem to unknow it. in these places j roddy walston and the business is the hometown band.
http://schedule.sxsw.com/events/event_MS11357

Distractions require an inordinate amount of attention considering their namesake, combining Arthur Russell detail and Bill Callahan sentiment on a Scott Walker-sized stage of weird. Band leader Tom Owens' baritone voice is so starkly contrasted by the noir pop that surrounds it, the effect is that of a jarring blow. Seemingly opaque yet ornate as a church spire, melodies smolder while songs force you to confront them in unsettling altercations that you only remember when you wake up the next morning. But you remember them. Go see a black & white film in a theater you walked to alone on a whim on a cloudless night. It sounds like that.
http://schedule.sxsw.com/events/event_MS13761

Shimmering Stars is a three piece dream pop act from British Columbia, Canada. It is a reinterpretation of the music of the late 1950s and 1960s, with a distinctly modern twist. Older influences like the Everly Brothers, Del Shannon, Phil Spector, and Bo Diddley are channelled through a contemporary indie lens. The band is the product of a life-long love affair with the music of the 1950s/60s and indie pop of the last 20 years ' bands like The Pixies and Yo La Tengo. In a lot of the music of the late 1950s and 1960s there is a darkness just below the surface, though at first glance the songs appear to be wholesome and innocent. Shimmering Stars is an effort to bring out some of these darker elements. The songs are inspired by the manic conditions of modern life. They are about young adults wanting to grow up but not knowing how, falling in and out of love, and being stuck in a state of indefinite adolescence. Shimmering Stars create timeless pop songs, drenched in reverb and full of arching harmonies, pulsing rhythms, and gorgeous melodies, often with dark undertones. The songs are haunting and sublime - at times blissful, and at others heart breaking. The band began as a recording project in Spring 2010. After stumbling upon some old live footage of the Everly Brothers, Rory McClure retired to his parent's garage in Kamloops BC to record the first demos. Shimmering Stars' dusty atmospherics are a product of the garage environment, and in this sense they are a part of the garage music continuum. Shimmering Stars is: Rory McClure ' vox, guitar Andrew Dergousoff ' drums, vox Brent Sasaki - bass, vox Shimmering Stars currently have an EP out on Almost Musique, with plans to release a full length in early 2011.
http://schedule.sxsw.com/events/event_MS12834

Summer is no myth. It exists year round on Holiday Shores Ct, a two-block stretch on the Florida panhandle where twenty-one year old Nathan Pemberton grew up. It's no more than five minutes from white sand beaches, squawks of seagulls, and wafting smells of suntan lotion. Columbus'd The Whim is the first first full-length album from Pemberton's Holiday Shores, who, like the street that bears their name, are quintessentially summer: chimey guitars, reverb-soaked vocals, warbling Rhodes, echoes of years past. Pemberton started playing the piano at age seven and learned the guitar shortly after. He began finding his musical footing in high school bands, playing with his brother, friends, and eventually his college roommates. The album, packed with 10 could-be singles, reads like a book of Pemberton's well-written memories. Each word chosen meaningfully with a linguist's touch; each sentence constructed carefully with an artist's ear. Columbus'd The Whim is a literary work in addition to a sonic one. The current line up, comprised of friends and roommates spent months recording together in Pemberton's living room obsessing over vintage gear and perfecting their captivating hooks, heart-warming melodies, and creating a haunting tunnel of sound as a stunning backdrop.
http://schedule.sxsw.com/events/event_MS12103

yan Hover and Kay Bertholf, composers, arrangers, and principle songwriters of Candy Claws, wrote Hidden Lands on keyboard because they don’t know how to play keyboard. They had to rely completely on what sounded right, rather than rely on techniques they had learned. Strange chords and melodies arose that might sound “wrong” to the trained musician, but sound mysterious and exciting to them. Each song on Hidden Lands contains a sample of every other song on the album. They’d used this technique on previous releases, but this time around it happens throughout the whole album, creating a very cohesive listening experience. Sometimes you’ll be able to recognize a bit of a song within another, but perhaps more interesting are the references only your subconscious will catch. Without you noticing, your mind (and maybe your heart!) will make the connections, bridging the bridge of one song to the intro of another, taking in the album as a whole, just like albums should be. Hidden Lands, their second album and first on twosyllable records, is a musical companion to Richard M. Ketchum’s book, The Secret Life of the Forest. To derive lyrics, the band borrowed paragraphs from the book and used translation software to translate them back and forth between English and Japanese until they equalized, finding very cool phrases along the way. The resulting lyrics are almost nothing like the original words, but are actually some very insightful and poetic phrases (“Trees, like all other forms of life, trace their origins back to the sea” became “Tree of life in the sea!”) While their previous release, In the Dream of the Sea Life sounds very contemporary - it’s easy to place it in 2009 or 2010 - Hidden Lands is timeless. It was a goal of the band to make it sound like they had sampled recordings from the mid-1900s, while in reality every sound you hear on the album was created in their tiny bedroom studio. They also hard-panned everything left, right, and center, like audio engineers had to do when stereo first came out. A bass line in the left trading off with a string section in the right; this is an album best enjoyed in the confines of headphones. On the road, Candy Claws are an orchestra of 8. Friends and musicians from the Fort Collins, CO area bring to life the sounds of Hidden Lands. It is completely unique and wonderful record. There may be nothing in the world like it. Hidden Lands is available from twosyllable records on August 3.
http://schedule.sxsw.com/events/event_MS12346

Speculator is Nicholas Ray, from Los Angeles CA. He uses cutting edge nineties technology to create music from the future.
http://schedule.sxsw.com/events/event_MS14335

Join MPress Records for an afternoon of free cocktails, free food and amazing music! Performers will include Caleb Hawley, Walter Parks, Avi Wisnia, Rachael Sage & The Sequins, Seth Glier and Melissa Ferrick.

http://schedule.sxsw.com/events/event_HB1522

Join MPress Records for an afternoon of free cocktails, free food and amazing music! Performers will include Caleb Hawley, Walter Parks, Avi Wisnia, Rachael Sage & The Sequins, Seth Glier and Melissa Ferrick.

http://schedule.sxsw.com/events/event_HB1522

Join MPress Records for an afternoon of free cocktails, free food and amazing music! Performers will include Caleb Hawley, Walter Parks, Avi Wisnia, Rachael Sage & The Sequins, Seth Glier and Melissa Ferrick.

http://schedule.sxsw.com/events/event_HB1522

Join MPress Records for an afternoon of free cocktails, free food and amazing music! Performers will include Caleb Hawley, Walter Parks, Avi Wisnia, Rachael Sage & The Sequins, Seth Glier and Melissa Ferrick.

http://schedule.sxsw.com/events/event_HB1522

Join MPress Records for an afternoon of free cocktails, free food and amazing music! Performers will include Caleb Hawley, Walter Parks, Avi Wisnia, Rachael Sage & The Sequins, Seth Glier and Melissa Ferrick.

http://schedule.sxsw.com/events/event_HB1522

Join MPress Records for an afternoon of free cocktails, free food and amazing music! Performers will include Caleb Hawley, Walter Parks, Avi Wisnia, Rachael Sage & The Sequins, Seth Glier and Melissa Ferrick.

http://schedule.sxsw.com/events/event_HB1522

Join MPress Records for an afternoon of free cocktails, free food and amazing music! Performers will include Caleb Hawley, Walter Parks, Avi Wisnia, Rachael Sage & The Sequins, Seth Glier and Melissa Ferrick.

http://schedule.sxsw.com/events/event_HB1522

Join MPress Records for an afternoon of free cocktails, free food and amazing music! Performers will include Caleb Hawley, Walter Parks, Avi Wisnia, Rachael Sage & The Sequins, Seth Glier and Melissa Ferrick.

http://schedule.sxsw.com/events/event_HB1522

MY!GAY!HUSBAND! has been producing taste making events, club edits+remixes & mixtapes for the last seven years from his home base in Vancouver, Canada. MY!GAY!HUSBAND! has performed in Brazil, Australia, Mexico, Thailand and throughout North America multiple times. MY!GAY!HUSBAND! has personally produced events in Vancouver for AARON LACRATE : AMANDA BLANK : BLACK KIDS : BONDE DO ROLE : BRUCE LABRUCE : CAPSnJONES CERTIFIED BANANAS : CHROMEO : CRYSTAL CASTLES : DATAROCK : DIGITALISM : DIPLO : DJ ASSAULT : DJ MEHDI : DUCHESS SAYS : FEADZ : FLOSSTRADAMUS : FLUOKIDS : FOUR COLOR ZACK : FRANKI CHAN : GIRL TALK : GLASS CANDY : HOLLYWOOD HOLT JEREMY JAY : JUICEBOXXX : KID SISTER : KOOL KEITH LO-FI-FNK : LOW B of HOLLERTRONIX : METRONOMY MIDNIGHT JUGGERNAUTS : METRONOMY : MILLION$MANO : MSTRKRFT : NO AGE : NUMERO# : PAPER CRANES : PASE ROCK : PATRICK O'DELL : PRETTY TITTY : RORY THEM FINEST SAN SERAC : SHOUT OUT OUT OUT OUT : SIMIAN MOBILE DISCO : SOUTH RAKKAS CREW : SPANKROCK : STEVE AOKI : THE COOL KIDS : THE TEENAGERS : THUNDERHEIST TITTSWORTH : TONITE ONLY : UFFIE : THE VERY BEST : and has a production track record in Vancouver to take a chance on bringing in new acts that have never performed in Vancouver, that have later attained a larger more diverse crowd and now headline + sell out much larger venues!
http://schedule.sxsw.com/events/event_MS13111

From Kraut grooves to ritualistic incantations, minimalist repetitions to pop songwriting, Vancouver trio No Gold is a compelling combination of flavors. With special nuance and attention, in both performance and recording, Jack Jutson, Ian Wyatt, and Liam Butler create as much space for experimentation as for pure dance-ability. The band began as an attempt to sweat out toxins in the crowded illegal basement venues of Vancouver with bright, wide and fast pop music. During this time they released a 7" with Vancouver boutique label The Broadway to Boundary. Experiments in electronic based sets as part of a series of renegade outdoor shows (organized by spiritual band brothers Basketball), has led to a collision of samples and synth pads with bass, guitar, and drums informed by Can, Arthur Russell, Terry Riley & Larry Heard. Recorded in their Chinatown studio in the dead of summer, their self-titled debut will be released on Unfamiliar records in February of 2011.
http://schedule.sxsw.com/events/event_MS13100

What started as a project to kill time during his 8 month unemployment in 2009, Cameron Reed's (AKA Babe Rainbow) experimental electronic music took off as quick as it began. Only months after posting his first songs online tastemaker blogs like 20 Jazz Funk Greats and Gorilla Vs. Bear were championing the desolate soundscapes and enormous beats. It wasn't long after that the influential UK-label Warp Records reached out to Reed to release the 7-song 'Shaved EP' in February '10. With remixes for artists such as DOOM, Midnight Juggernauts, and Comanechi, a mixtape, and a series of music videos and shorts, Babe Rainbow stayed in the press earning praises from the likes of the Fader, Stereogum and Pitchfork. In July '10 he was invited to perform in NY at the MoMA PS1 Warm UP Series opening for his heroes Animal Collective. A handful of festival appearances across Canada followed. Weaving thick textures of sound that engulf the listener, Babe Rainbow is as much ambient and noise as it is hip-hop and dubstep. The music may not be the easiest to dance to but it certainly demands your attention, because if you don't follow along you'll get lost in the maze of tones you've been submerged in.
http://schedule.sxsw.com/events/event_MS12531

Teen Daze is an electronic musician from Vancouver, BC. In July 2010, he released his debut record, "Four More Years". The record is a blending of summer sounds, washed out synths, and hazy, reverb drenched vocals. Pitchfork, in their review of the record, wrote, "Teen Daze seems in total control; his synths bleed into more brilliant colors, his languid pace more purposeful, his memory bank FDIC-insured, his vagueness earned by the quality of his output." Three tours followed, including a stop in New York City for CMJ 2010, and in November, "Beach Dreams" an EP of lo-fi, beach pop songs was released as a "pay what you want download". The EP is still garnering critical praise, and being downloaded more and more every day.
http://schedule.sxsw.com/events/event_MS15190

We're a duo from Toronto that makes a sort of bass-heavy leftfield soul music.
http://schedule.sxsw.com/events/event_MS12839

Basketball; an energetic four piece driven by live electronics, spirited vocals, and massive percussion create an inclusive primal sound that grows into pulsating dance beats. Their live performances, like rituals, induce mass dancing through catharsis, roping bodies into possession with their fierce beats, and sparkling with eastern melodies. Their cargo: drum machines, a constellation of percussion, zurna, Persian santur, electric guitar, sub upon sub, and voice upon voice. The combination of their sound has drawn comparisons to Modeselektor, Gang Gang Dance, Buraka Som Sistema, The Joker and Tinariwen.
http://schedule.sxsw.com/events/event_MS10866

Poirier is a DJ/producer from Montreal who is signed to Ninja Tune. Though he has worked in many different genres of electronic music, he is known for his eclectic taste in music and appreciation of tropical bass sounds focusing, especially now, a lot on caribbean music (soca, dancehall). He perform as a DJ and most of times with an emcee (Boogat and/or Face-T). Also, he likes air horns.
http://schedule.sxsw.com/events/event_MS13983