Photos by Trent Maxwell
If you need practice in the art of dancing with yourself, SXSW is a good place to bone up. If you steer clear of the big-box spectacle acts and high-profile showcases, attending dance-focused performances at the festival can prove to be a very simple pleasure. Compared to a typical club experience, the crowds aren't as big, the drinks are cheaper, and with few exceptions, you're less likely to rub elbows with assholes. Most importantly, if a set starts to go south in terms of enjoyment, the solution is simple: just find something else to go and see.
With this in mind, I spent most of Friday night at SXSW bouncing around Austin to take in a few dance-oriented sets, with nary a guitar in sight except for one instance (we'll get to that later). I started out with Danish techno vet Tomas Barfod's performance at Red Eyed Fly, a curious, vaguely bulb-shaped venue located behind a bar of the same name that possesses an atmosphere making you feel as if you're dancing inside a giant acorn (at least, to me). Barfod's been at it for a while now, both on his own and as a part of electro-pop Danes WhoMadeWho, but he reached a greater level of visibility with his latest LP, Salton Sea, which bridged the gap between techno's knotty machinations and indie-pop's sense of low-key charm.
For that reason, his recent signing to largely dance-averse American indie Secretly Canadian isn't as surprising as it may seem, and if the material he mixed into his set last night appears on his forthcoming full-length for the label, his slightly offbeat, sparkling take on body music may stand to reach an even larger audience. If not, maybe he could get a good side gig going as a fashionista: the shirt he donned during the set was impressively heady, looking something like a T-shirt version of TV static, while vocalist and frequent collaborator Nina Kinert's jacket resembled a similar aesthetic turned inside-out and slathered in gold.
If Barfod's take on techno skews slightly abstract, then comparatively UK duo Gorgon City's style can be best described as a straight line. The North London pair are currently signed to British dance label Black Butter, an imprint that's played as much of a part in the current chart-placing deep-house revival across the pond as Disclosure has; I've run hot and cold, alternately, on Black Butter's output—some of it seems too obvious, too pro forma to be interesting—but it's impossible to deny their rich, soulful single with up-and-coming songwriter MNEK, "Ready for Your Love".
Clearly, the crowd at the Main II agreed, as they positively erupted when Gorgon City dropped the wonderful tune in a set that also included a remix of Hardrive's UK garage classic "Deep Inside". I've spent a while wondering, mostly to myself, if deep house is going to end up as the new dubstep in mainstream American dance music in terms of large-scale popularity; it's still too early to tell, but the giddy, rave-minded crowd—sporting headbands, neon sunglasses, fauxhawks, and other accessories that usually scream "Run far, far away" to anyone over 30 years old—was as much an indicator of changing trends as it was that the crowd was waiting for an expected late-night set by, you guessed it, Skrillex.
Fast forward a few hours later to the Iron Bear, where my focus shifted from deep house to the dance sub-genre's more directly disco-indebted sounds with longtime DFA affiliate the Juan MacLean's hour-long set. One doesn't find themselves begging for crowds at SXSW, but I wished nonetheless that a bigger crowd showed up to this one; Juan MacLean sets are notoriously energy-packed, and it would've been good to feel part of a more swarming mass of humanity as he dropped such gems as last year's outstanding single with Nancy Whang, "Feel Like Movin'", and Robin S.' eternal classic "Show Me Love". Granted, though, the crowd picked up near the end—and no one had more energy than DFA friend and "Catfish: the TV Show" co-host Max Joseph, who was in town to screen his short doc on the storied NYC label, Too Old to Be New, Too New to Be Classic, and wriggled all over the venue with guiltless aplomb.
Let's get back to guitars for a moment, even if I've spent the last six years of my life increasingly moving away from them: the most jam-packed crowd I'd seen all weekend (that didn't get shut down, most likely due to the sponsor-heavy presence) was at the Pains of Being Pure of Heart's performance at the Chevrolet Courtyard at Cedar Street, a brand-a-palooza that was exactly as awful as it sounds. The band was pretty tight, though, and that's not something I'd ever say about them live in the past: previous iterations of the Kip Berman-fronted indie-pop project have left me indifferent in live form, but with a totally new lineup and minus a few instances of screeching amp feedback, the band performed old cuts and new ones from the forthcoming LP Days of Abandon with a serious sense of muscle that's impressive even considering the relative tenderness that the new record possesses at times.
Less surprising in the muscle department were performances from Cloud Nothings and Against Me! earlier in the day at SPIN's Stubbs day party. The former pumped out tunes from their new album, Here and Nowhere Else, with drummer Jayson Gerycz providing piston-like energy; the latter turned in what I think at this point was the best set I've seen at SXSW thus far, the evidence of a long-running band inexplicably getting richer, more powerful, and flat-out better as they age. I think Transgender Dysphoria Blues is Against Me!'s best album to date, easily, but the production dampens the songs a bit for my ears—so to hear them delivered in an impassioned, in-your-face manner, with frontwoman Laura Jane Grace exuding positivity and passion, was more soul-enriching than anything I had planned to experience this week.