There are supposed to be 5,000 bands here in ATX.

Here I want to focus attention on a sub-set of Austin musicians who are in one way or another trying to push the boundaries of musical idioms, cross-fertilize genres, and create new forms of music. This is the beginning of such a list. Please let me know of more!

-Bee vs. Moth: these folks play quirky, eclectic, clever, energetic, subtle, playful little ditties, and their live show is quite fun if you are willing to actually pay attention and give yourself over to their art. The main point of reference is jazz with an occasional rock or pop edge, but I describe them as "jazz/not-jazz". Wacky and serious at the same time, holding simple and technical elements in dynamic tension, displaying serious chops and ability to jam, yet concentrating on the internal structure of each piece, Bee vs. Moth embark on the road less taken.

-Fiction: I have high hopes the rest of Austin is going to catch on to this outfit, now that their debut "You Will Never" is getting airplay on KVRX. The musicality in this group is nothing short of inspiring, but they eschew showing-off for songwriting, attention to sonic detail, and carefully edited composition. There are so many interesting and rich qualities at play: multi-part vocal harmonies that hint at emotional intimacies, use of time-signatures more typically associated with "prog" or jazz than pop, ambitious and impressive integration of electronics into songs with live drumming (I call this "mantronica"), and use of space and rests to do "addition by subtraction", or making less more. If talent rises to the top, Fiction is on the way up!

-Low Red Center: an all-improv, zolo-ish outfit with former Oblong Boys and featuring innumerable machinic textures leavened by sax and violins. In an earlier review I called them a "soundtrack for robo-teens or escaped apes", due to their oppressively loud and barbarous cop-magnet electro-noise. While every show I suppose is different, recently at Rancho Relaxo Low Red Center was more sophisticated, using live drumming, allowing some space to creep in, each player listening more, allowing each other to develop motifs, with the overall effect typically intriguing and at times delightful. Zolo tends to be characterized by tight composition and/or proggy complexity, whereas they use a jazz-like improvisatory aesthetic. Their sets are uneven, as they are figuring it out as they go along, but that makes it more unusual and all the more interesting.

-Cobo Foofaroo: do they really exist? Rather like a quantum-mechanical particle with a low level of probability for manifesting out of a vaccuum. Yet they used to play around the campus-area, at Spider House, in an alley behind the Drag, up at the Parlour on North Loop. Their odd-metered tunes have an unusual focus on sandwiches, snacks, and groceries, making a kind of "food rock" dork-prog aesthetic that is balanced by sprightly and melodic violin lines. If you took the country/ska/gypsy elements out of Camper van Beethoven, and amped up the complexity of the rhythm via mathalete guitar chugging, you would get a sense of Foofaroo's brand of zany yet subtle sound. Whimsical and playful songs such as "Pludaw" are about as creative and musically interesting as anything in Austin. Perhaps the intricacy of the material prevents Cobo Foofaroo from just playing a show any old time (there are partial reunions in obscuro venues and rumors of full reunions), but how I wish they could play the record "Mallards and Lasers" in it's entirety! I have taken it upon myself to accost the principal homo sapien in the group to please get it together, and there are mumbles of maybe...who knows. Such a reunion is more probable than Renaldo and the Loaf coming to Austin, but less likely than SXSW being filled with a bumper-crop of newish bands sounding exactly like 9,763 other bands of the last 35 years.