Emo’s is a huge, barn-style venue a roughly two miles south of downtown Austin. Its location, slightly removed from the heart of SXSW proper, meant the club was packed under capacity. That meant free, quick admittance for the entirety of the night to all comers over 18, not exactly the norm when more prominent artists put on shows here. Compare that to the Flaming Lips, whose no-cover spectacle last night had hundreds of people getting lined up to wait for entry by noon.

The lineup, composed of electronic and hiphop artists pulled from Mad Decent’s roster, was enough to draw hundreds of excitable attendees. Some artists played spectacularly long sets — The Presets went on for more than an hour before handing off the DJ platform to A-Trak.

It’s amazing how this kind of popular music has come to be defined. When every song is hypersaturated with audiological gimmickry, it’s hard to understand how evolution of the electronic/dance music form is even possible. But it’s happened. The rampant advancement of clubs’ noise delivery mechanisms is one part of this syndromic cultural phenomenon, but that’s not all. Artists have raced forward along with the technology, hammering out the quirks and finding what works with the help of millions of listeners, online and smushed against the front of stages worldwide.

On the afternoon of March 14, I got to hear some of Major Lazer’s set at the Viceland Stage. What they do live, now, makes the tracks that Diplo and his Jamaican mates first put on the market sound, hell, minimalist — “Keep It Going Louder” has one beat, one goofy house synth sound and a couple voices.

Mad Decent has proven to be extremely important in economic terms as well. As mentioned in my last article, the question of how SXSW serves artists’ financially is of ongoing pressing concern. This label has built a reputation for pulling artists out of nowhere and blowing them up on a global scale.

That mythological significance invites cynicism. Could such cute hype be true? Or are the origin stories of these artists just convenient fictions to make the culture industry’s consent manufacturing go down a little smoother?

Josh Napert suggested that people can work their way into the musical spotlight from grassroots origins. He’s a producer operating in Wisconsin, who’s built a professional-grade studio over years of acquiring equipment and expertise. He viewed this, his first visit to SXSW, as part of that trajectory. “Getting drunk and swearing in front of damn important industry people,” he said, describing the most important part of his visit so far. “Making connections.” Napert said he expected the week to close out well. He’d be attending more events with the help of his friend and manager Thomas Carrillo, whose managerial obligations at the moment seemed primarily to be keeping both of  Napert’s hands gripped around Strongbow Cider tallboys. I let him know my theory that Austin’s increasing population density and skyrocketing waves of emotional valence was bound to precipitate outbreaks of physical violence — a fistfight that left one man with a broken arm had spilled out into the street in front of me that afternoon, giving evidence to this possible worldview. Every event is tailored to handle such physical dramatics, and security personnel are poised to throw their weight around in every conceivable area.

This could be the year SXSW ends in a all-consuming bloodbath, God forbid, I said. He agreed that was a possibility.

Napert spoke to me in the “VIP section” of Emo’s smoking patio, an area I gained access to when the club’s security mistook my green wristband from a previous show for their own VIP decoration.

Before speaking with Napert, I’d been sitting a wooden bench and grading undergrads’ essays for the class I TA, which is called “Entertainment, Media, Business and Media in Today’s Society.” It seemed appropriate. Three feet in front of me, Riff Raff posed for photos with a stream of fans. He’s one more individual to supposedly live the Horatio Algers 2.0 success story, amassing a following and a fat bank account after starting with little more than a bonkers Twitter presence. What comes of his career will be hugely telling, as far as determining how well the position of chain-bedecked, Bart-Simpson,-MTV-and-BET-logo tattooed, freaky-deaky facial haired techno sideshow existence can play on the center stage. Last night, an Italian tourist named Davide told me he’d come to Emo’s to see Diplo, not some “rapper pretending to be James Franco’s character from Spring Breakers.” That kind of statement does not seem to make Jody Highroller happy.

After the show, one drunk dude started blasting trap out of his car in the parking lot until he got scared into turning it down by the cops. Independent music is awesome.