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Gazing Back At The Void: East By Southeast

Graham Clark |
March 14, 2013 | 1:11 p.m. PDT

Staff Cartoonist

Patrick Alberts of Call Of The Void. (Graham Clark/Neon Tommy)
Patrick Alberts of Call Of The Void. (Graham Clark/Neon Tommy)
The film “Slacker,” has typified Austin perhaps more than any other media. And Madonna’s pap smear aside, the scene that stands out as most visually memorable features a room full of tube televisions, blaring away simultaneously.

It was an image that sprung to mind easily at Sony Media’s showcase last night. The interior of Club Six had been wallpapered with digital display screens and media output consoles, encouraging bar patrons to interact with the companies newest portable speakers and other techno goodie detritus.

Meanwhile, on the roof of the club, primal utterances were being blasted out into the night sky.

READ MORE: Neon Tommy On The Road To SXSW

Call Of The Void was the evening’s sponsored entertainment, a metal group from Boulder, Colorado. While they did their best to devastate the high end audio spread, audience members restrained their reactions to safe head bobbing and polite thrusting. Anything beyond that was discouraged by the event’s administration, who removed moshers and slam dancers from the venue post haste.

READ MORE: Walking The Streets Of Austin 

Near the end of the show Steve Vanica, Void’s vocalist, said he’d been instructed by the hand of God to discontinue performing after one song. “The big, three fingered, Mickey-Mouse-gloved hand of God,” he said. “One more song.”

Some concert attendees were disappointed in the lack of full throttle thrashing. As one longhair attendee said, while walking home from the performance: “Well, yeah, it was put on by f---ing Sony.”

Follow the East By Southeast series in realtime multimedia form via Meograph.

Click here to read all of Neon Tommy's coverage of SXSW 2013.

Read more of NT's show coverage here.

Reach Staff Cartoonist Graham Clark here. Follow him on Twitter here.



 

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