Tag: Austin Psych Fest

indie rock by William Ruben Helms

Founded by the members of the acclaimed Austin-based psych outfit The Black Angels and a collection of friends back in 2008 as a wholly DIY event, Austin Psych Fest expanded over the next handful of years into an international destination for the underground psych music scene. Since the inaugural festival, its organizers have sought to create a thriving center locally for the city’s independent music scene and internationally in the home of psych rock.

The event was renamed LEVITATION in tribute to legendary Austin-based psych rock outfit The 13th Floor Elevators, who reunited to play the festival in 2015.

Austin Psych Fest returned earlier this year, celebrating its 15th anniversary with a three-day throwback to its original, multi-stage, single venue format, bringing back a more intimate gathering for the Spring, while the sprawling LEVITATION will continue to take place in the Fall.

Austin Psych Fest is here to stay. And the 2024 edition of the festival will take place at the historic The Far Out Lounge during the weekend of April 26, 2024 – April 28, 2024. 2024’s edition will bring the old school vibe of the original event back outdoors and under the stars and oak trees at The Far Out Lounge’s sprawling backyard.

The upcoming Austin Psych Fest features an international slate of psych rock, dream pop and indie rock that simultaneously nods to the 1960s psych rock golden age with an eye towards the future. 2024’s lineup will feature Courtney Barnett headlining on April 26, along with Chicano Batman, Psychedelic Porn Crumpets, Orions Belte and more. JOVM mainstays The Black Angels will headline the festival’s second day, April 27 — and their set will feature the premiere of a new visual collaboration with TV Eye. That day will also see sets from All Them Witches, JOVM mainstays Frankie and The Witch Fingers, L.A. Witch, Japanese kraut rockers Minami Deutsch and more. The festival’s third and final day will feature a headlining set from Alvvays, and sets from JOVM mainstays Still Corners, Kurt Vile and the Violators and more. The full lineup is below.

Mind-bending liquid light and visuals will be provided by video artists Mad Alchemy, TV Eye and drip//cuts.

The LEVITATION Presale for both LEVITATION ’23 and Austin Psych Fest ’23 ticket customers went live earlier today and is here.

General public on-sale is tomorrow, December 15, 2024 at 10:00AM CST. You can check that out here.

AUSTIN PSYCH FEST LINEUP:

FRIDAY, APRIL 26 
COURTNEY BARNETT • CHICANO BATMAN 
PSYCHEDELIC PORN CRUMPETS
NO VACATION • LIDO PIMIENTA
LEVITATION ROOM • TROPA MAGICA
BRAINSTORY • ORIONS BELTE

SATURDAY, APRIL 27
THE BLACK ANGELS • ALL THEM WITCHES
WITCH • FRANKIE AND THE WITCH FINGERS
EARTHLESS • L.A. WITCH • HOOVERiii
MINAMI DEUTSCH • GHOSTWOMAN

SUNDAY, APRIL 28
ALVVAYS • KURT VILE & THE VIOLATORS
DEHD • YELLOW DAYS • STILL CORNERS
BLONDSHELL • MIKAELA DAVIS

& MORE TO BE ANNOUNCED!

Video by William Ruben Helms

New Video: Introducing the 4AD Records-Inspired Shoegaze Sound of Los Angeles’ Tennis System

With the release of their latest effort PAIN earlier this year through Graveface Records,the up-and-coming Los Angeles, CA-based noise rock/shoegaze trio Tennis System has developed a reputation for a classic 4AD Records sound: squalling feedback-tinged power chords fed through delay and effect pedals, thundering drumming and ethereal melodies, centered around a rather sunny ambivalence, and a sense of profound loss — and for quickly establishing themselves as one of their hometown’s best, new live bands. In fact, the trio have played sets at Austin Psych Fest, Noise Pop Fest, Echo Park Rising and the Air & Style Festival, and have shared stages with The Flaming Lips, Ride, Dinosaur Jr., Kendrick Lamar and Diiv among others. 

“COMINGDOWN,” PAIN’s latest single will further cement the band’s reputation for crafting a familiar and beloved sound — in this case, recalling My Bloody Valentine, A Storm in Heaven-era The Verve, JOVM mainstays Dead Leaf Echo, My Vitriol and others but with an anxiety of wha the future could hold, after a horrible event that the song’s narrator knows they will regret. 

Directed by Logan Rice, the video follows  Niamh Hannigan as she distractedly goes through her day — and through a series of rapidly changing colors, grainy fade outs and fade ins, the video suggests that its protagonist is slowly coming down from the throes of hallucinogenic fugue. 

Video by William Ruben Helms

New Video: Boogarins and O Terno Team Up for a Trippy Cover of Classic Brazilian Psych Rock

Towards the second half of 2015, the Brazilian indie psych rock quartet Boogarins quickly became a JOVM mainstay, and if you had been frequenting this site over that period dog time, I had written about a couple […]

Video by William Ruben Helms

Live Footage: Pure Phase Ensemble 4 with RIDE’s Mark Gardener Performing A Mind-Bending “Notatki” at Space Fest 2014

    This weekend Gdansk, Poland hosted the fifth annual Space Fest, an annual festival of shoegaze, space-rock and alternative music featuring concerts, workshops for Polish and internationally-based musicians, meet and greets with legendary and renowned artists, a competition […]

Video by William Ruben Helms

Live Footage: Deap Vally Performs “Royal Jelly” at Blind Blind Tiger Speakeasy

Comprised of Lindsey Troy and Julie Edwards, the Los Angeles-based  grunge-rock duo Deap Vally can trace their origins to when Troy and Edwards met in 2011 at a crochet class. The duo’s debut effort Sistrionix was […]

New Video by William Ruben Helms

New Video: Life on the Road with Brazil’s Boogarins

If you’ve been frequenting this site for the past few weeks or so, you may remember that I’ve written about the internationally acclaimed Brazilian indie psych rock quartet, Boogarins. The Brazilian quartet can trace their origins to […]

Single Review by William Ruben Helms

The internationally acclaimed Brazilian indie psych rock quartet, Boogarins can trace their origins to when its founding duo, Fernando “Dino” Almeida and Benke Ferraz started playing music together as teenagers in their hometown, the central Brazilian city of Goiânia. The music that Almedia and Ferraz began to write and then eventually record was a unique vision of psych pop that drew from their country’s incredibly rich and diverse musical history — but with a decidedly modern viewpoint. Their 2013 full-length debut, written and recorded as a duo, As Plantas Que Curam was a decidedly lo-fi home studio effort, pieced together in isolation before the duo had played a live gig. By the time, their debut album was released, Almedia and Ferraz had recruited a rhythm section, and the completed lineup had started developing a profile both in their hometown and nationally, as they started booking and playing regular gigs in Sao Paulo and several of Brazil’s largest cities.  Without much support from a label or from a major PR firm, As Plantas Que Curam was a critical and commercial success in Brazil, as the album received praise from Rolling Stone Brazil, who had dubbed the band “Best New Artist” in 2013, and the album was nominated for several awards on GloboTV’s annual music award shows. Arguably, a great deal of the success and attention that Boogarins has seen in their homeland comes from the fact that unlike the majority of contemporary Brazilian acts that primarily sing lyrics in English, like their British, Australian and American counterparts, Boogarins material is written and sung completely in Brazilian Portuguese.

Now, if there’s one thing the blogosphere has gotten absolutely right, its the fact that as a general rule it has given attention and praise to a number of fantastic internationally based acts that many American listeners wouldn’t have been aware of before, unless they were particularly adventurous. And over the last two years or so, Boogarins have started to receive increasing international attention as the band as toured across the globe, playing at some of the world’s most renowned and largest festivals, including Austin Psych Fest, Burgerama, Primavera Sound Festival and headlining shows in clubs in London, Paris, Barcelona and New York. Naturally, with that kind of exposure, the band started to receive praise from a number of internationally recognized outlets such as Pitchfork and The New York Times, who compared the Brazilian band’s sound to the likes of early Jefferson Airplane.

During their Spring 2014 European tour, the members of Boogarins spent two weeks in Jorge Explosion’s Estudio Circo Perrotti in Gijón, Spain, where they started tracking for material, which would wind up comprising their sophomore effort, Manual, which is slated for an October 30 release. Actually, the album’s full (and official title) is Manual,ou guia livre de dissolução dos sonhos, which translates into English as Manual, or Free Guide to the Dissolution of Dreams, and the material on the album is specifically meant to be viewed as a diary or sort of dream journal. The band eventually returned to Brazil and in between concert dates across South America, they finished the album in Ferraz’s home studio.

Manual‘s material is reportedly not only more personal than their debut, it’s also more socially conscious as it draws from the sociopolitical and class issues affecting their homeland before, during and after the 2014 World Cup as entire neighborhoods were pushed aside and destroyed for massive commercial developments that helped wealthy global corporations make even more money, instead of uplifting those who desperately needed uplift and were promised it from the World Cup. (Certainly, as a native New Yorker, the stories of increasingly gentrification changing the face, character and population of the city would seem remarkably familiar.)

Just a few weeks ago, I had written about album single “Avalanche,” a slow-burning yet breezy and percussive song comprised of shimmering guitar chords played through reverb and delay pedals, swirling feedback and a sinuous bass line paired with plaintive and ethereal vocals. And in some way, the song sonically speaking sounded as though it drew from Dark Side of the Moon and Wish You Were Here-era Pink Floyd and Tropicalia but thematically drawing from Rage Against the Machine; in other words, dreamy and trippy yet grounded in the real world — and done in a way that’s powerfully accessible.  The album’s latest single “6000 Dias” is a slow-burning kaleidoscopic song that’s propelled and held together by a tight rhythm section, as the song is composed of about three distinct segments — one which includes a gorgeously, twisting and turning guitar solo that’s reminiscent of Robby Krieger‘s incredible, guitar solo in “Light My Fire” before ending in a gentle fade out, which evokes the sensation of slowly waking from a pleasant reverie.

New Video by William Ruben Helms

New Video: Boogarins’ Breezy, New Single “Avalanche” Draws Influence from Pink Floyd and Tropicalia

Boogarins, the Brazilian, indie psych rock sensation can trace their origins to when its founding duo, Fernando “Dino” Almeida and Benke Ferraz started playing music together as teenagers in their hometown, the central Brazilian city of Goiânia […]

Uncategorized by William Ruben Helms

Indie psych rock act, Ancient River is the brainchild of the Gainesville, FL-based singer/songwriter and guitarist James Barreto. The band can trace its origins to 200 when Barreto was a member of the DIY and […]

Uncategorized by William Ruben Helms

A Q&A with Secret Colours’ Tommy Evans

When the Chicago, IL-based Secret Colours released their debut, self-titled effort and their sophomore effort Peach last year, they were a sextet, which is highly unusual for most rock bands. But between the after effects of the release of Peach and […]

Uncategorized by William Ruben Helms

As the London-based quintet, the Horrors were set to write and record new material, they were determined to create material that was much brighter, more positive and take on more of an electronic sound. Interestingly, Tom […]

Uncategorized by William Ruben Helms

The Brooklyn-based band Weird Owl have established themselves as one of the preeminent New York psych bands. They’ve managed to make something of a name for themselves on the national stage as they’ve toured with […]