2013-05-19T21:50:26-04:00 Alixander III http://www.huffingtonpost.ca/author/index.php?author=alixander-iii Copyright 2008, HuffingtonPost.com, Inc. HuffingtonPost Blogger Feed for Alixander III Good old fashioned elbow grease. tag:www.huffingtonpost.com,2013:/theblog//3.2961459 2013-03-28T17:48:15-04:00 2013-05-15T21:21:21-04:00

Alixander III http://www.huffingtonpost.com/alixander-iii/
It's still a cheap thrill to drop the name Azari & III at a relatively unrelated industry event and be met with recognition and a quick usher in through the gates. Our wrists already sport a plethora of vibrant bands from the past eight days of SX frolicking, and we add neon-orange nylon VIP accessories as we slide in past the disgruntled line-up of wishful thinkers and aggravated or deflated somebodies.

Our "in" is someone we've never met from the American wing of Torontonian promotional empire Embrace. Adam Gill's sleepless super-team seem to be promoting every single event we show up at, be it a jam-band freakout, a trap artist rave-up or Kendrick Lamar's hyped-up after-hours.

Baauer is currently destroying the place with the re-appropriated rap beats common to our new era of mutli-genre crossover, where metrosexual anomalies like Starving can now manoeuvre freely and unthreatened amongst his once-feared throng of genuine American inner city folk.

I'm telling him that times have changed, the States is a different place than it was not so long ago. These days we can all get down together and eccentricity is at a high rate of acceptance. Proving me theory, SYF is getting compliments left right and center, from his head scarf to his excessively layered torso apparatus there doesn't seem to be a homophobe detractor in the bunch. Solange Knowles is especially enamoured and I'm sequestered to take a pic of the two of them. Another slick pic for the AZIII Spinner Magazine Instagram take-over.

SX has been a duality of easy-breezy meditative chillness and rush-rush tuk-tuk chaos. Amidst the line-ups and miss-outs I squeeze in some surprise experiences. Just last night at the Hype Machine Hotel party we Djed, I caught The Specials perform to a jammed-in crowd of anticipants, and they killed it.

I admit I'm a bit of a fan at heart, I was a parka sporting three-button lil mod boy back when, and Im still wearing authentic monkey boots to this day. The brown leather with yellow stitching pair this eve. Monkey's were always the cooler Doc Martin alternative, and I have a source in the UK for surplus from the Ukraine where they were once the blue collar choice for civic nightlife footwear in tough Eastern Block factory towns.

I still burn that torch and secretly hope that balls-out neo-mod rock makes as much of a comeback for my burgeoning new guitar outfit The Cruelty Party as house did for Azari & III. Timing is the big one and its a strange miracle that I caught the first wave (or was it the third!!??) and then hit the cyclical rejuvenation just as I hit my long awaited musical stride. I feel like I'm privy to some insider information holding onto the secrets of underground society instilled in me back in the early 90' rave-o-lution.

I remember clearly a time when every person at the party would lock into their own personal dance interpretations, their bodies twisting, curling, winding and spiralling in parallel to the channeling techno from guys like Terry Mullen, Stacey Pullen, LX and Richie Hawtin. No one had any care of self image or the onlookers around them. They were lost in this new and subliminal sound that allowed for freedom of movement and deep forays into the alleys of the mind.

My first tattoo is a Plastikman on my forearm, replete with two blazing gats in the air, unfortunately severely damaged by a skateboarding half-pipe incident while still in the vulnerable healing stage. I just reconnected with Richie for the fist time since those fledgling acid-drenched warehouse raves in Hamilton, Ontario in the early to mid-90s.

Back then Richie stayed over at my then girlfriend's apt with his brother Matt. I'm pretty sure she had a fling with the younger Hawtin brother while I was relegated to our roommates bed. Not that I mind, I'm a communal kind of guy and at least that time she picked a cute and harmless chap to tickle my jealousy nerve.

My current partner, lover, companion of the past 10 years, fiancee and accomplice in all things
deep and dangerous is with me. Eunice is the light of my life, I bring her almost everywhere with me, my memories aren't complete unless shared with her. Scary dependancy, I know, but after years of aloof detachment brought on by the serially damaged relationships Id so long navigated, I'm once again all-in and head first without a safety net. Somehow this time it's different, it's longer, deeper, stronger and irresistible.

Life is suddenly different these days. We are in the flow, things are taken care of all around us, we just need to stay on the tracks and maintain our open portal to the magical and magnificent. To the strains of Texas Radio and the Big Beat, edited by Splice and looping up transcendentally, we coast home in a dusty 4x4 driven by a young local with a tripper's glint in his eye. I'm blissfully unaware that the following morning my flight out of Austin will be cancelled due to an electrical storm in our connection city Atlanta. We'll be crashing on the couch of our local herbal medicator as his unexpected and errant flat mates crash in the door and continue their drunken domestic melee.

I can't help but take comfort in the fact that life is life whether in the Lone Star or in Parkdale. Wherever you go there you are, all the world's a stage, and the stage seems set for the Azari & III mission to America, our continuing crusade to spread the message of techno-funk to the partisan corners of this great nation.]]> tag:www.huffingtonpost.com,2013:/theblog//3.2909253 2013-03-19T17:00:00-04:00 2013-05-19T05:12:01-04:00

Alixander III http://www.huffingtonpost.com/alixander-iii/ Slacker, which I managed to later catch at a rep cinema. I fell in love with it and looked deeper into this place that embodied this odd mythos, already being acquainted with Bob and the church of slack. From what I could gather in pre-Internet Hamilton, Ontario, Austin was a vibrant, lower pop city with a healthy dose of absurdist realism and tolerant bohemian ethic.

But like a Madonna Pap smear, the truth to the legitimacy of the product would have to wait unil -- flash forward -- 2012, when Azari & III first performed there at The Parish. We were happy to see a healthy crowd of familiarized fans show up and we had a great show. Later, in the back alley of the venue, we met some local cool kids and went off on an adventure with them. These kids were maybe in their early twenties, but they still seemed to have some quality to them that was reminiscent of the vibe in Slacker. I was relieved and elated, and I saw some deep dancing at a local Goth bar.

It's now 2013 and our first time at SXSW. We're sitting in a rented house in the East end, complete with chicken coup, rusty Honda CB400, and some kind of random aviary action going on above the dog pen.

I just got back from an EU tour ending with a week in Holland, so I make a recipe I had picked up there for the gang called stamppot: crushed potato, kale and shit. It goes down well and we enjoy some Chimay. FYI, organic groceries in Austin ain't cheap. The stamppot was like $40 including rookwurst (an organic chorizo substitute).

We're staying a little out of central, so some kids are driving us around and they all seem to have funny, odd stuff like old DBX compressors, megaphones, and rare, early 80's gay club vinyls scattered in their trunks and back seats along with the half-emptied cases of Lone Star. Some obligatory party favours are easily acquired and with a very casual attitude. It's cooler than we thought it would be and the wind is intense and frankly, a bit chilling. The stamppot is counteracting that. But the vibe is warm and our first foray downtown in daylight was met with the irresistible aroma of smoking brisket from a food truck off Congress.

I'm doing a label showcase for Idol Hanse on the last Saturday of SXSW and I peek into the "suhiya" venue Silhouette; strange, it looks and smells more like a cheap draft watering hole than a sushi spot. According to my mate here, Adam Warped, there's been some decent jams there recently. For some reason, I get a bit of a New Orleans-meets-Denver vibe here, but that's just based on my limited experience in each city.

We have this night off to chill and have a rare, communal, home-cooked meal on the road, but the rest of the following seven days here are a shit storm of show after show, some days three in a row -- noon, night and late night.

Our first throw-down was last night for Twitter at the AMoA, and it was great, like a psychedelic array of light and sound for a crowd that was obviously expecting what we advertise to deliver. Cathartic revelry is an interesting thing to conjure and we always do our best to mutually attain that state with the crowd. By the end of the show, ramped up by opener Kidnap Kid, it was clear that we were there together for a free time of exuberance fueled by high dB output courtesy of Funktion One with Mr Chuck Knowledge at the helm.

With shows for Pitchfork, Richie Hawtin, Hype Machine +++ coming up this week, we're going to relish this moment of quiet calm before a storm of intros, outros, high dBs and higher MCs consume us as we blast or way through what is SXSW in all its frantic yet hypnotizing buzz. Then we do Miami. Breathe deep, then dive in.

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