Tom Robinson|03:00 UK time, Thursday, 31 March 2011
The third of our Introducing favourites to make a video report for us from South By Southwest 2011 was the London band Nedry. Many thanks to Chris Amblin from the group for putting together this video and writing the following guest blog post for us:
"To say that arriving in Austin, Texas this Spring was a relief and a thrill would be underselling it quite a lot, 6 months of anticipation had built up to this moment (since receiving our official invitation) and the stress & large expense of plane tickets, US visas and last minute equipment hire made this feel like an all or nothing type affair! Luckily we had the strong support of Monotreme Records all the way, who part funded this trip along with the wonderful PRS Foundation and UKTI. Make no mistake, this is a very expensive festival to play at, with just the transport and visas going into the £1000s, very few UK acts could even consider coming to SXSW, so we were very fortunate indeed.
We'd heard stories of endless free beer and bbq food at all-day parties, but that had to wait for the time being. One of our primary reasons for coming to SXSW was to establish contacts with professionals we would not ordinarily have access to and on day one we headed to the huge conference centre for a morning of free panel discussions available for official performers, where we were delighted to find top level music industry types happily discussing the topics of the day with anyone who asked.
Over the week we'd learn from music industry professionals about the future of music delivery, get advice about the advantages of setting up our band as a limited company, hear what steps to take to get our music placed in films and on TV and take part in many discussions about the future of the music industry in general. One of the more surprising things I learnt was the emergence and importance of band 'apps' and how artists were now utilising smart phones in a gig environment to directly interact with the crowd. Sounds fun, but I thought the idea of a gig to interact with an audience by inspiring and entertaining them with your musical performance? We did our best to encourage these important industry types to come along to our showcase, but with their inboxes full of invites and pockets full of flyers it was a tough sell.
Our showcase fell on St. Patrick's day and as we set up in an alleyway outside Latitude 30 (the home of the British Embassy showcase) there was a whole world of chaos unfolding yards away on 6th Street. An estimated 40,000 people ascended on the festival this year and most of them were contained within 6 blocks of venues, bars, shops and pizza joints, it was bedlam.
We had a fantastic time playing in the US for the first time, we gave it our all, everything had built up to that point it seemed and we were determined to not get lost in the noise of it all. Right before we started a young Texan approached the stage and said in quite a broad southern accent 'Y'all gonna play Squid Cat?', amazingly he knew one of our songs! We had a bonafide US fan at our show and in truth that meant more to us than any industry professional turning up. We chatted to him afterwards and he was doing his best to get an electronic music scene going in his suburb of Austin, inspired in part by a few of the videos we'd posted up on YouTube when we first started, that meant a lot.
For the remaining few days in Austin we did get around to enjoying some free beer and also a lot of new music. Braids in particular impressed me with their refreshingly free form live performance. We played our 100th ever gig in the rather surreal surroundings of a house party in a squat / hostel in the university district, north of the city. We'd come a long way from playing a small dance tent at Truck Festival in Oxford in the summer of 2008. As we got on the plane home it had all seemingly gone in the blink of an eye, but with any luck we'll return for dates elsewhere in the US soon!"
Sam Denniston of Ice Black Birds shot this quick report for BBC 6 Music Introducing as the group stroll up to 6th Street in Austin - main hub of the South By Southwest music festival. Their single "22:22" has just been released in the UK - for more information see the band's website at: iceblackbirds.co.uk
Gabby Young with her partner Stephen (Revere) Ellis reporting from South By Southwest 2011 in Austin Tx, and rehearsing with a 15 piece local marching band for their show at The Tap Room on Friday March 18th. Gabby, Stephen and a cast of dozens will be re-recording the title track of Gabby's album "We're All In This Together" in Austin on Sat March 19th as a #SongForJapan - for up to date information or to get involved in the project either tweet @gabbyyoung or get in touch via https://gabbyyoungandotheranimals.com.
Four times a year we put together a two hour music mixtape picked from favourite tunes featured on the show over the previous three months. The hard thing isn't deciding which tracks to include, but choosing which ones to leave out - there's so much great music to choose from. You can download this week's mixtape as two 60 minute episodes from our podcast page.
This Sunday morning thanks to the arrival of British Summer Time the clocks leapt forward by an hour... So the show began at 1am as usual but after just 60 minutes it was suddenly and magically 3a and time for the 6 Music Overnight Documentary. So we instead of including the usual mix of features, interviews and sessions we devoted this special short edition of the show to news and new releases from some favourite artists we've been following over the past few years.
Tonight we heard music from a number of artists supported by this show who'd been playing at South By Southwest in Austin this week, and instead of IIntroducing Roulette we heard from our top Texan tipster Jen Leduc on the ground in Austin as the festival started.
On Thursday 3 February 2011 BBC Introducing hosted a unique event at two world famous studios, Abbey Road and Maida Vale, where 250 new musicians got an opportunity to hear from some of the biggest names in the industry - including established artists, record labels, managers, BBC DJs and many more.
The list of experts that attended the Musicians' Masterclass included the likes of Kaiser Chiefs, Tinchy Stryder, Calvin Harris, Toddla T, Annie Mac, Jo Whiley,Steve Lamacq, Zane Lowe, Bobby Friction and Pete Tong. You'll find full length videos from every session to watch at your leisure on the main BBC Introducing website
Meanwhile here is one of the workshops I hosted at Abbey Road, offering writing and performing advice for musicians and MCs.
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|03:00 UK time, Thursday, 31 March 2011
