Live music preview: Oblivion Access Festival returns to Austin in June
Oblivion Access Festival returns in June (15-18) to Austin venues. The summer festival happens across Red River Cultural District to spotlight experimental music. In 2020, Austin Terror Festival rebranded itself, taking the name from Lil Ugly Mane’s 2015 album. Originally, the festival hosted metal bands but has since become more encompassing, from dark electronic artists like TR/ST and Clams Casino to hip hop, from acts like Clipping as well as noise sub-genres.
Headliners of this years lineup will resonate with hardcore music enthusiasts and connoisseurs. In the early 1970s, Faust fused the organic psychedelic rock with brazen industrial excerpts to create what is now the genre of krautrock. Beak> includes members from Portishead, creating tracks influenced by Krautrock and the Beach Boys.
Clams Casino became a piece of internet folklore in the days of early Reddit. If you were to look up “I’m God” by the electronic artist in collaboration with Imogen Heap, you will find a homage to David Higgs, a user citing this track to his demise in threads. The electronic artists slows down and distorts samples for melodic tunes that you’d likely find playing in the waiting room for heaven or hell. Immediately after Clams Casino, Clipping will smash you upside the skull with the fierceness of reality with hip hop with the flow of spoken word. In “She Bad”, the artist creates a coven out of an ethnolect.
Atmospheric, shoegaze, and lofi. Connecticut-based band Have A Nice Life headlines at Mohawk on Friday. Early Saturday at Empire Control Room and Garage includes new wave bands Choir Boy and Drab Majesty. At Central Presbyterian Church, Earth fills a sacred space with drone-based guitar “relying on heavy yet hypnotic forms of repetition”, creating ambient metal as its own subgenre beginning in 1990 through the 2000s.
On the other end of the spectrum, Prison Religion takes on all aspects of noise sub-genres. There’s something comical about the overly aggressive noise rap track “John Mayer”, an acoustic artist encapsulating “Live, Laugh, Love” signs everywhere. Little is known about noise rock supergroup USA/Mexico based out of Austin, Texas featuring King Coffey of Butthole Surfers and Craig Clouse of Drain. The sludge duo takes on Tex mex inspo on EP “Del Rio”.
Over the years, I developed a dichotomy for categorizing songs. Music became either “light” or “dark”. “Light” music could be shared without risk: upbeat tempos, make a safe indie band, or something you could sing along to. “Dark” music avoided being safe; it kept my anxiety close to an otherwise sane mind with the purpose to cause a stir. Sometimes the lyrics riled up an otherwise unfamiliar turf, sometimes I formed a closeness with the unnatural, high-pitched electronic sounds and sometimes the tranquility of “dark” music conjured up a synthetic sense of peace otherwise unattainable. For those with similar introversions, Oblivion Access Fest should satisfy those wants. Tickets for Oblivion Access Festival are available here.
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