- Ingrid Laubrock & Tom Rainey
The Blackout, HoZac Records’ annual rockin’ blowout, returns this weekend, and I suggest preparing for it by reading our recent Artist on Artist with “Handsome Dick” Manitoba of Dictators NYC, who headline the festival Saturday. If that’s not your bag there are plenty of other shows to check out this weekend.
“Twenty-four-year-old Swedish EDM producer Tim Bergling, aka Avicii, burst onto the pop scene in 2011 with a maximalist, arena-ready sound—and his single ‘Levels,’ a hit on several continents, propelled him so fast and so far that he was playing in actual arenas seemingly overnight,” writes Miles Raymer. “If you aren’t a DJ, and therefore haven’t spent the past two and a half years fielding nonstop requests for it in every conceivable setting, the title may not jump out at you, but you’re sure to recognize it—it’s the song that samples Etta James singing ‘I gotta good feeling’ over squiggly synths and then explodes into a Red Bull-flavored neon fireball. ‘Levels’ spits in the face of subtlety and good taste, as does Avicii’s 2013 twee-folk/EDM smashup ‘Wake Me Up!’ (which reached number 4 on Billboard‘s Hot 100), and dance-music aficionados consider Bergling an abomination.”
