Levitation 2018 – 7th Level Music

Levitation Music Festival Recap – Day Four: Old friends, new friends, old habits, new stains

We started the fourth day at the Levitation Music Festival with another tradition – the Sunday gospel brunch at Threadgill’s restaurant. It’s a pretty good deal, and the music always sound good. The band there this year was the Levites, and they were having a great time.

The first band we saw at the festival was Acid House Ragas, which consists of DJ Al Lover on synths and beats and can-we-call-him-a-friend-by-now? Rishi Dhir on sitar. They got the festival off to a nice start with meditative drone music.

We left Stubb’s to grab a bite at the Moonshine Cafe, which serves “southern comfort food.” Holy cow. That was some of the best blackened catfish I’ve had in a long time. After stuffing our bellies, we returned to Stubb’s in time to almost bump into Christian Bland of the Black Angels and Christian Bland and the Revelators. This was the fifth time I’ve met him, and I thanked him again for the festival. He and his bandmates help curate it, and I told him it was our fourth year there and we already had tickets for Levitation France in the fall. He thanked me and was excited to hear we were going to the fall festival. He’s always in a good mood whenever I bump into him.

We caught most of the set from the Brian Jonestown Massacre. My wife flipped out when she realized band member Joel Gion was “the tambourine guy from Gilmore Girls.” They put on a set to an always appreciative crowd, and frontman Anton Newcombe encouraged all of us to quit using pesticides in order to save bees. We also met up with James from Ancient River and his wife, Nakia, while there. We hadn’t seen them since 2014, and I hadn’t seen James since 2015 when he and his bandmate, Alex, played a gig in Ft. Wayne, Indiana. It was great to catch up with them and meet friends of theirs from England who were also at the show.

Mr. Newcombe later walked through the crowd during the Black Angels‘ set, shaking hands with yours truly and many other fans. The woman behind me gave him a big hug and her boyfriend also shook hands with him. It made that woman’s night. They talked about it for another ten minutes at least.

The Black Angels, as always, put on a great set. They started with “Young Men Dead,” their usual closer, and kept tearing it up from there. Lead guitarist Christian Bland shredded more than usual, and drummer Stephanie Bailey was once again an unstoppable beast.

We headed to Barracuda to catch synth-punks POW!. Unfortunately, we missed most of their set, but what we did hear was a fun and raucous. Their weird cover of the Addams Family theme was a nice treat.

Following them were Oh Sees, who I’ve been wanting to catch for years. James told me he’d seen them perform the previous night and said it was an impressive, high energy set. Sure enough, all the hype you’ve heard is true. A mosh pit broke out within the first four bars and I was soon in it. Various drinks were flying, people were crowd surfing, and my shoes were a stained, dirty mess by the end of it. It was a great way to end the festival on a high note and leave us with enough energy and hunger to grab a late night pizza slice on the way back to our car.

It was a nice return for Levitation Austin. The town, and the festival, needed a good comeback. Multiple people at the festival agreed with me that the vibe there is always good. You don’t see or meet a lot of jackasses at this festival, which is always a plus (but, good grief, why are people still smoking cigarettes in 2018, and especially in the middle of a crowd?).

See you in France this fall?

Keep your mind open.

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Levitation Music Festival Recap: Day Three – Shoegaze, synths, and psychedelia

The third day of Austin’s Levitation Music Festival was off to a good start when we bumped into Rishi Dhir of Elephant Stone and MIEN at a vegetarian breakfast cafe and then the Men at the same place. Mr. Dhir remembered seeing us at a small show in Pittsburgh and told us he and the other chaps in MIEN were a bit nervous about performing their first live show at Stubb’s BBQ that night. We told him we were sure they’d rock it. I also told Nick from the Men that they reminded me of the MC5, and he was a bit blown away by the compliment.

MIEN did indeed rock their first live show. We heard their soundcheck while dining at Stubb’s (Where, by the way, the best deal is the all-you-can-eat menu.) and we again saw Mr. Dhir not long before their set. We told him they sounded great, and they did during the full set. They played nearly their entire debut album and their nervous energy only seemed to benefit the set.

Local synth heroes (and Stranger Things score creators) SURVIVE were up next and put on a deep, creepy set that was longer than they expected. They kept thinking they were out of time, but they still had enough to play three more songs before they really were done. It was funny to see them look offstage and ask, learn they had plenty more time, and then grin as they tried to figure out what to play next.

Finishing up the night at Stubb’s were shoegaze legends Slowdive. I was late to their party, but got on board with their self-titled return album after nearly twenty years of no new music. There was a good-sized crowd there by this point and people went crazy for them. Many professed their love for singer / keyboardist / guitarist Rachel Goswell, who seemed humbled by all the love.

They nearly leveled the place with reverb, fuzz, and dreamy rock. My wife wasn’t sure to make of it. She later told me it nearly put her to sleep, which I suppose is one of the goals of such ethereal music.

We then moved over to the Empire Garage to hopefully catch the last half of No Joy‘s set, but alas they had finished by the time we got there. Dan Deacon already had a big crowd and was spinning up a wild dance party despite his laptop computer giving him fits and a vocal distortion pedal breaking. He had the audience building a tunnel with their arms above their heads and dance through it until his laptop computer crashed.

We left a bit early, and I later read on Twitter than Deacon smashed his laptop by the end of the show after it crashed yet again.

Up next, my wife freaks out upon seeing Joel Gion on stage, Rishi Dhir returns, and I get Red Bull dumped on me.

Keep your mind open.

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Levitation Music Festival Recap Day Two: Scrambled eggs, scrambled brain

The second day of Levitation Austin was going to be a feast of bands from outside the U.S. The number of international acts that play the festival every year is one of my favorite things about it. I’ve discovered many great bands I wouldn’t have heard otherwise at Levitation Austin.

After a great brunch at the South Congress Cafe (which I couldn’t finish), the first of the six bands we’d see that day was Superfonicos – an Austin band of locals and Colombians who play a great mix of Afro / Colombian funk. They played to a crowd that seemed to grow larger with each track, as more and more people walking by the venue came in to hear who was dropping all that killer groove.

Following them were musicians all the way from Algeria – Imarhan. My wife and I have fallen in love with Tuareg music thanks to the Levitation festival, and this was our second time seeing Imarhan there. A lot more people were hyped to see them this time than when we saw them in 2016. It’s not that they were a bad band in 2016 – far from it. It’s that they’ve been working hard, touring a lot, and have a fine new album (Temet) that’s getting a lot of buzz. They had everyone moving and people behind me in the crowd were stunned by their bass player and lead guitarist.

Closing the night at Cheer Up Charlie’s were hometown heroes / aliens Golden Dawn Arkestra, who entered the venue through the crowd and billowing sage incense everywhere before they launched into a sun-worshipping funky freakout that had a packed crowd of dancing revelers all communing with other-dimensional beings. GDA never disappoint, and some people we met that night (one of whom was in a psychedelic band out of Chicago) who hadn’t seen them before thought the set was one of the coolest things they’d ever seen.

We then went over to Barracuda to see Chilean psychedelic rock outfit Vuelveteloca. Unfortunately, we missed the first half of their set, but what we did here was psych-rock as solid as the Andes.

NYC’s The Men followed, and they came out gunning. In the first two tracks I thought, “This might be the closest I ever get to an MC5 show.” They even played some Captain Beefheart-like stuff by the end. They were loud and brash, which made the next set even weirder.

The final act we saw the second night was another Chilean band – Follakzoid. I’d only heard a couple tracks by them before coming to Austin, and they were good ones that bordered somewhere between shoegaze and psychedelia. I didn’t know what to expect from a live show, but I can tell you it about melted my mind. They played two tracks and an encore. The two tracks during their main set were about twenty-five minutes each of droning, repetitive (in a good way) space rock that is hard to describe. Imagine synth bass and riffs combined with drumming from apparently a human metronome (considering how long he kept those beats going) and maybe five different notes played in different ways and with different effects and levels of distortion and reverb. Sound weird? It was – wonderfully so. Sound like it shouldn’t be good? You couldn’t be more wrong. It was one of the best sets I saw all weekend, easily in the top three.

Up next, my wife tries to figure out the big deal about Slowdive, we bump into more musicians, and a laptop keeps giving someone fits.

Keep your mind open.

Levitation Music Festival Recap: Day One – Loose change, good rock, yummy noodles

It was our fourth trip to the Levitation Music Festival (which I still call the Austin Psych Fest now and then), and we were happy and eager to support it after the weather-battered and cancelled 2016 festival. That took such a toll that the 2017 festival in Austin was also cancelled. This needed to be a good bounce back for the Reverb Appreciation Society (who curate the festival) and the city of Austin. The city still remembered the series of bombings that plagued the city just a month earlier, so the town needed a morale boost. It worked. The limited number of deluxe weekend passes (which allowed access to all shows across the four days) sold out in minutes. No, I didn’t get any of them. I, like most of the attendees, had to buy tickets for individual shows.

The biggest change for the festival this year was that it was no longer held at Carson Creek Ranch and its three outdoor stages. The 2018 festival was held in multiple venues in downtown Austin – Stubb’s BBQ, Emo’s, Cheer Up Charlie’s, Empire Garage, Barracuda, Beerland, the Mohawk, Volcom Garden, and Hotel Vegas. My wife said she preferred the festival this way, as it gave us more places to relax between (and during) sets and more options for food. We rented an apartment via VRBO that was a ten-minute drive from the venues and the Spot Hero parking app became our best friend over the course of the four days. We never paid more than $10.00 for parking for an entire night while in Austin.

I had five shows slated for the first day of the festival (Thursday). The first was Ron Gallo. I hadn’t seen Mr. Gallo and his crew since I saw them open for Screaming Females in a small Fort Wayne, Indiana show. I was keen to see how big of a crowd they’d get since they’d achieved notoriety with their first record and toured with the Black Angels. I’m happy to say they had a good crowd at Stubb’s and were a great opening to the festival. They encouraged us to create our own reality and that everything will be okay.

We headed out for dinner after their fun set, and I started two trends that continued the entire weekend. The first was finding pennies. I found at least three every day we were in the city. It bordered on bizarre. I don’t know why Austin apparently has no use for pennies (and even quarters), but I’ll happily take them.

We ate at Daruma, a great ramen bar in downtown Austin. We started the second trend of the weekend there – Meeting musicians. A group of six sat at the bench-like table with us and we learned they were a self-described “gospel / hip-hop” band called Kings Kaleidoscope from Seattle who were playing in town that night. We also learned there that our broth was probably made by the bass player and / or drummer for Holy Wave, who were playing a record release party that night. We didn’t catch them, because we wanted to get back to Stubb’s to see Ty Segall. We got back a bit earlier than we’d planned, and ended up catching Parquet Courts‘ set first.

They played a loud, energetic set, but it sounded like they were being heckled by multiple people in the crowd who either wouldn’t shut up between songs or kept yelling out requests. A couple band members told them multiple times to cool it.

Ty Segall came to shred. Every song seemed designed to burn the Stubb’s stage to the ground. He had some problems with the lighting, however, and had to tell the light technician to change the lighting and stop strobe lights and projections because he couldn’t see the rest of the band from his position on stage. My wife asked, “Shouldn’t all of that had been established in his contract ahead of time?”

Ty Segall at Stubb’s BBQ. That’s him shredding on the far right.

We missed his encore because we went to Barracuda to catch Virginia stoner metal powerhouses Windhand. We got there about halfway through their set, and they were already melting faces. My wife asked if the bass player’s hair covered his face because their music had melted it. It was a reasonable question, considering how heavy their riffs were.

Windhand throwing it down like a titanium gauntlet at Barracuda.

Unfortunately, we missed the set by Christian Bland and the Revelators, but we did get to Beerland to see Austin’s own Ringo Deathstarr. They’re local shoegaze legends, and I’d wanted to hear them for a while. Despite the Beerland sound engineer not being able to keep some microphone feedback in check, Ringo Deathstarr put in a solid performance. Their drummer has serious chops. I left wanting more.

We got back to the apartment around 2:00am, which was another trend that would continue all weekend. It was a good first night, and we were happy to be back.

Up next, a day of funk, garage rock, and Chilean psychedelic freak-outs.

Keep your mind open.

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Levitation Austin artist spotlight: Oh Sees

Otherwise known as Thee Oh Sees and OCS, Oh Sees are a wild psych-rock band whose lineup goes through changes seemingly with every record but the hard, driving energy of their music never alters. Both of their Levitation Austin shows at Barracuda on April 28th and 29th are sold-out, but you still might be able to get tickets for their show at Austin’s Hotel Vegas on April 30th (which is a charity benefit show, no less). These shows are sure to be nuts, so get to one if you can.

Keep your mind open.

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Levitation Austin artist spotlight: Pow!

Synth-punk weirdos POW! are playing Levitation Austin at Barracuda on April 29th at 10:50pm. It’s a sold-out show at with them opening for Oh Sees. They pay a quirky, catchy brand of electro-rock that I think will be a treat live. I hope you can make it.

Keep your mind open.

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Levitation Austin artist spotlight: The Black Angels

Austin’s own Black Angels not only play Levitation Austin again this year, they also help curate the festival every year. The psych-rock heavyweights will close Stubb’s BBQ on April 29th. I will see them at any opportunity, and it’s rare I get to see them in front of a hometown crowd. Their set will be one of my favorite moments of the festival, I’m sure.

Keep your mind open.

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Levitation Austin artist spotlight: The Brian Jonestown Massacre

The psychedelic rock collective known as the Brian Jonestown Massacre hail from San Francisco and have had numerous lineups throughout the years. Front man Anton Newcombe has always been the steady figurehead of the group, and their fans are legion. The stories of their rock and roll lifestyle are wild and border on legendary. Their Levitation Austin set at Stubb’s BBQ on April 29th will be packed to the gills, I’m sure.

Keep your mind open.

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Levitation Austin artist spotlight: Rishi Dhir

Primarily known for being the front man in Elephant Stone, Rishi Dhir is also now with the psych-rock outfit MIEN and has played bass and sitar for the Black Angels in the past. Dhir will be performing a solo set (probably all sitar) at Stubb’s BBQ on April 29th at 6:00pm at Levitation Austin. Don’t miss it. He’s a good joe and a heck of a sitar player.

Keep your mind open.

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Levitation Austin artist spotlight: Dan Deacon

Electronic musician / DJ / avant-garde artist Dan Deacon will be closing one of the Empire garage sets at Levitation Austin (April 28th at midnight) this year. His shows are apparently wild affairs with audience participation. His videos are weird enough, so a live set from him should be a good time if it’s as odd as they are.

Keep your mind open.

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