AEMfest is this weekend. Here's a handy guide.

Hey dudes,

The Athens Experimental Music Festival is coming up on Saturday, May 1st at The Union. It goes from 2 p.m. to 2 a.m. Here's a handy guide to what you should catch this weekend according to your tastes:

If you like dark ambient:

Check out Cleveland-based act Murderous Vision. MV has been active since the 1990s, alternating between old-school lush death industrial with scathing vocals and long passages of synthy dark ambient. Check out his upcoming releases, a c-70 on Danvers State Recordings and a new full-length orchestral industrial album on his own label Live Bait Recording Foundation.

If you like grindcore:

Make sure you don't miss fellow Clevelanders Fascist Insect. This quartet takes Napalm Death-style grindcore with disgustingly sludgy breaks. Check out their upcoming tracks collection Baptized In Smegma and various releases that they will have with them.

If you like doom metal:

Columbus' Do Chimps Battle? is not to be missed. The group takes a Melvins-esque approach to doom metal, with a pop-infused songwriting style. DCB is one of the many groups returning from last year's AEMfest.

If you like electronica:

Akron's Shapeless Shadow is right up your alley. Brian Wenner (formerly of Octoberfist) is the man behind Shapeless Shadow, which combines cosmic IDM and breakbeats with a rhythm-sequenced light show. Check him, as well as several other electronica artists, out throughout the day.

If you like noise rock:

Dead Peasant Insurance from Cleveland is the right choice for you. DPI is made up of Wyatt Howland (of the super-harsh noise project Skin Graft), Ryan Keuhn (of Thursday Club), Amanda Howland-Davidson (Wyatt's sister and the band's lead vocalist and guitarist) and drummer J Guy Laughlin (also of the band Puffy Areolas). DPI features filthy harsh noise, shrill vocals and chaotic free-jazz drumming.

Check them, as well as all the awesome acts, out on Saturday at The Union from 2 p.m. to 2 a.m.

The Upper Crust

It's springtime and I want something that hits as heavy as metal, but can still make me move and get into it like good hardcore punk. To satisfy this craving, I've turned to crust punk.

Crust, which blends hardcore punk and d-beat with metal style riffing (drawn quite a bit from early black metal like Bathory and Hellhammer), is a genre obsessed with anti-establishment politics, primitivism and ecological / animal / human rights issues. It draws these influences together in a melange of fast paced hardcore punk replete with extreme riffing and thrashing passages of mayhem.

My listening has led me to quite a bit of more “popular” crust bands, such as G.I.S.M., Aus-Rotten and Amebix. Of these, G.I.S.M. has clicked the best with me. In fact, I spun the track “Endless Blockade for the Pussyfooters” at a party this weekend and one fan went so out of control that he put his foot through the wall.

I've found myself more entranced with more contemporary bands, whose use of metal riffage becomes even more extreme. For instance, I'm drawn to bands such as Wartorn and Black September (both of whom I got to see at For Real Fest last year and have been in love with ever since), Dishammer (whose black metal-meets-d-beat sound and name are composed of two trends: “Dis-” and “-hammer”) and, most recently, Nux Vomica (who combine crust with jawdropping technical metal shredding).

Before anyone asks, I'm not just jumping on the crust bandwagon because of Lady Gaga's jacket. I don't know if that's actually going to happen for young crust punk fans, but I can't imagine that a scene full of anti-capitalist black bloc-ers will be too into their look and bands being bandied about on MTV as a hip name drop.

Fuck your drum circle.

Spring is in the air; as a result, I am largely confused with regards to music to listen to at my disposal. Normally, my one-two punch of harsh noise and black metal gets me through the frosty winter months. But what do I for the months where sun and fun is the order of the day? I've been searching for music to complement the weather, but I haven't necessarily found the right combo. Punk has been somewhat successful; the usual blend of Oi! and D-beat has worked to my advantage. Lots of lo-fi hardcore such as Total Abuse and Raw Nerve has been spun in the past few weeks, as have the requisite powerviolence and thrashcore discography CDs. However, when Scholastic Deth and Spazz can't pass muster, I turn to an old favorite: jazz.

I've loved jazz since high school and, naturally for me, my tastes have leaned towards the more chaotic, discordant realm of free jazz, especially the works of Sun Ra, Peter Brotzmann and John Coltrane. The jazz-fusion era of Miles Davis is also a must, especially the funkier acid-jazz albums such as On The Corner and Tribute to Jack Johnson. There are many contemporary jazz bands that make it into my rotation as well, notably Chicago's Tiger Hatchery (for their free-jazz workouts) and Cincinnati's Wasteland Jazz Unit (for their caterwauling free jazz meets harsh noise approach).

Spring also means the reemergence of hippies and their drum circles on College Green. Personally, while I enjoy the sound of tribal drumming and polyrhythmic drum patterns, I absolutely despise it when it's used as a way for hippies to draw attention to themselves. On top of that, I find it annoying to have to hear the same monotonous, unchanging rhythms over and over as I walk around College Green. Don't get me wrong, there are many people who are incredibly disciplined at their hand drumming and have been immersed from birth in the cultural traditions of generations of skilled people who use drums as a method of ritual, worship and cultural significance. I feel, however, that besides the AZA and other culturally-minded groups who embrace these traditional drumming rituals and meanings, 90% of the hand drummers wasting their time on Court Street or on College Green are doing their part to eliminate the cultural significance of tribal drumming.

Whereas a drum circle in Africa might signify any number of life occasions or religious ceremonies, in Athens, it means that King Lavender and Silverfish found their djembes in the garage and want you to know about it.

It's the same way I feel about white people with dreadlocks and mohawks. First of all, very few white guys can pull off dreads and not look like total tools. The symbolism of dreads lies in the ideas of black pride and African resistance to white standards of beauty, not in the popularity of Bob Marley as a cultural icon. The wearing of dreads by most white people is unintentionally a method of cultural colonization that erases the meaning of dreadlocks in popular culture. Instead of being associated with Black culture and Rastafarian religious beliefs, they become associated with the guy selling grilled cheese at 10KLF. The same goes for bros with big tribal tattoos down their arms. You're not a part of any “tribe.” You live in a housing development in Westerville. Stop getting tribal tats and get something original.

It's not just hippies and meatheads, though. Punks: shave your Mohawks. These were worn as a tribal hairstyle by Native Americans until DeNiro in Taxi Driver made them cool for alt kids to wear. Since the 1970s, Mohawks have been more closely associated with those scary punk kids at the mall than with Native American culture. Besides, its not really that edgy anymore. Shave your head or grow it out or do something new.

To clarify, it's not that I think whites should look “white” or something like that. It's that whites shouldn't appropriate the looks of cultures struggling to maintain what little culture they have. If I piss you off for saying shit about your hair, don't take it personally. I'm sure this is restating what a million punk zines and blogs have already said about these issues.

Listen to some free jazz, shave your head and enjoy the weather.