The Audio Perv

SXSW is the craziest, busiest music festival in the country. In addition to all the networking, conferences, industry panels, you have concerts.. during the day, night, and overnight. Then there are parties, during the day, night and overnight and super late night/early morning. Over the next few days, we’ll have some recap posts for you as well as some features on specific shows and exclusive interviews! Stay tuned!

We arrived into Austin late afternoon on Wednesday the 17th. If you have any questions as to whether Austin is a music town, there was a SXSW banner at the escalator at the airport and statues of guitars near the baggage claim.

Upon getting into downtown, we headed immediately over to our Manic Fest Destiny Party which featured over 40 bands! The event was a massive success thanks to Tijuana Gift Shop, Exotic Recordings, Sideways Media, and Half Door Records. Not only was the event at the extravagant Belmont, it was free and open to the public. Some of the stand out bands included Austin’s own The Black And White Years. The Black And White Years are super catchy indie dance rock slightly reminiscent of Tears For Fears. Check out some photos below thanks to Bridget Maher of Rockpit.com

We also caught The Art Of Shooting who remind us of Tori Amos/Poe if they rocked out a little harder. A highlight of the band’s set was catching their cover of Queen’s “Fat Bottomed Girls.” Make sure to catch them at Piano’s in NYC on April 27th for their CD release show!

Next, we saw Middle Distance Runner from Washington, DC. Think of Arcade Fire with a little more fire and soul. Check out some photos below and make sure to catch them Tuesday April 6th at Jammin Java as they compete to perform at DC101′s Chili Cookoff in May.

The last band that we caught at our awesome Manic Fest Destiny Party was California’s own Vanaprasta. If Kings Of Leon were from Silver Lake, they’d sound like Vanaprasta. Expect big things from these guys this year. Catch them next April 9th at the Beauty Bar in San Diego.

In order to make sure that we caught a little bit of everything, we went over to the Speakeasy to see Tabi Bonney who was great. For rockers like us, Tabi Bonney was a lot of fun to watch. He’s not hardcore rap but alternative hip hop. (apologies for the low quality cell phone pic!)

A little later in the Kabaret room at Speakeasy, we tried to see/hear the mad hyped Madlib. Unfortunately, the place was so packed and the volume was so low that we didn’t really get to truly enjoy the experience. Either way, it was cool to catch some different music.

To say that we were beat from our connecting flights and over 7 hours of music would be an understand. Stay tuned for Day 2 coverage.