By Saturday, fatigue begins to kick in among the delegates gathered in Austin. They've been partying for three straight nights already, and faced with the prospect of a fourth, many stay in bed those extra few hours on the Saturday morning. Kunek, however, aren't having attendance issues - they've filled up the Flamingo Cantina with no trouble and are treating the audience to some of the most delightful music to come out of Oklahoma since the Flaming Lips. A Stillwater-based 6-piece, Kunek are hypnotic and mesmerizing - blending piano, guitar and cello into a wide-open expanse of sound. Their 2006 album 'Flight Of The Flynns' comes across as a little bit on the Coldplay-indie side, but when playing live their post-rock aspects really come to the fore and frontman Jesse Tabish's vocals shine, sounding a thousand times better than the disinterested vocals on the album.
After Kunek finished I wasn't able to stick about as I wanted to rush over to the conference centre to try and catch the panel on 'Selling Music Digitally'. I was looking forward to it - the panelists consisted of representatives from the digital music giant RealNetworks, new kids on the block Broadband Instruments Ltd/Slacker, digital aggregator The Orchard, digital music research company BigChampagne, CD traders Lala.com and eMusic - the only US online store currently selling MP3s in large quantities - all people with a considerable amount of knowledge on all things digital music. I was looking forward to hear them debate. But frankly I wished I hadn't bothered rushing. Most of the discussion involved the various companies plugging their products - as opposed to genuinely discussing the best way forward for selling digital music. The representative from RealNetworks, particularly vocal on the plugging front, spoke of the glories of his company's personalised playlist system. The representative from Slacker waxed lyrical about his company's forthcoming product, similar to internet radio services Last.fm or Pandora, but on a portable device. The representative from eMusic predictably didn't like DRM much. Nothing earth-shattering was said, nor were there any interesting questions asked. Sorry. I feel a little bit guilty now for wasting a minute of your life reading that paragraph. I promise the next one will be better.
Back to the bands then. Playing in the Red Fez, Colourmusic (spelt the British way!) fly the flag for eccentricity. Decked out in matching white tracksuits, the band mix indie-rock and stoned hip-hop beats much like Beck or the Beta Band. The blend sometimes works, and sometimes doesn't, but the crowd (perhaps comprised of friends of the band) love it. The band are definitely mixing musical colours - but sometimes it just comes out that funny mushy grey colour that I always ended up with on my palette after a hardcore painting session in primary school.
Lastly, to cap off my week I visited the Nylon magazine party, which promised free booze, a lineup including the superb hip-hoppers Spank Rock, and DJs from Dance, Robots, Dance! It was a great night - Spank Rock played an excellent show, the free drinks flowed happily among the attendees and everyone went away happy. A delightful end to a crazy week.
South By Southwest is an exhilarating experience. The combination of well over 700 official shows, at least the same number of unofficial ones, the trade exhibition, the panel discussions, the networking, the industry professions, the music fans - everything - blows you away. It's not an experience for the faint-hearted, or those who need more than 4 hours of sleep a night. If you can deal with the exhaustion and the fatigue, however, and keep your wits about you and your mobile phone charged, then you'll have an absolute blast. This was my first SXSW. It will certainly not be my last. DG