Frank Kimenai is present at the yearly SXSW festival, he will give us live blog updates from Austin! This is the last part in the series!

So, saturday arrived. The last day of this insane festival, and not a minute too soon, because I’m beginning to get exhausted. Todays schedule started with a meet-up with Nick Helderman at the East Side Dive, where we bumped into Sander Kerkhof and Atze de Vrieze, both journalists from the Netherlands. I asked them what they thought was the key to succes for Dutch bands that play at SXSW. I put some thought in that myself the last few days, and came to the conclusion that you really need to have a functional connection with something or someone from the US, like a label, a zine, a management, a booker, etc., before it is even remotely worth coming over to the festival. As Atze put it, you won’t get annyones attention by playing SXSW, you must have their attention before you get to SXSW, and then make the difference. I think that for most Dutch showcases I’ve seen or heard of, this determining key to succes, is missing. SXSW is so massive, and everyone here tries to catch peoples attention, that you will
never get noticed if you don’t have a network that works with and for you. And that’s the hard part. Getting that network. That takes time, effort, but first and foremost, good, pro-active bands that are willing to work hard, very hard for it. You gotta be prepared to sleep on couches, drive in stinking vans for hours, drag everybody in single handedly. And by doing that for a while, your network will grow. And if you have created some buzz and following, the next step is to play a festival like SXSW. Not  the other way around. So, all those things like the The Hague showcase, the Dutch Music Export showcase, and what not, they won’t make the difference if they just fly bands in to get them noticed.

Anyways, saturday also was the last day of checking out bands. I’ve seen quite a few again. The Hometapes records party with Megafaun was amazing. Can;t wait to see them live at Incubate this year. After that, we went to see Kurt Vile at Waterloo. He’s having his big break at the moment with his new album, which is amazing. The show was good, bit short, and it was nice to meet up with Kurt and Jesse Turbo again after 2 years of not seeing them. I travelled a few days with them back in 2009, when they played the Kraak festival in Belgium. Stayed in touch ever since, they are such good guys! After some good food, I checked out Moon Duo and Touche Amore, a new hardcore band, a bit in the vein of old American Nightmare and Modern Life Is War. They have quite a following of young kids that went mental during the show. Would love to have them on Incubate. Next up was Creep, a DJ duo from Brooklyn, NY that makes a really good blend of dubstep and hiphop, with a bit of a gloomy and doomy atmosphere. Good performance, too bad it was in a DJ booth and there was no lights or anything like that. Joost van Bellen agreed! )

Decided to check out Black Milk at the Buffalo Billiarts. It was hard to get in, everybody seemed to be in line for the Odd Future show that went on there later. There was heavy security, searching, metaldetectors, and cops around the entrance. Guess that is the price for putting up hype bands. Black Milk was kinda cool, with a live drummer and bass player. Very energetic, raw hip hop. I have the feeling that Hip-hop is taking a bigger part of the festival every year. The prior years were more (indie)rock based, but the hiphop part seems te grow bigger and bigger. Next up, I went to see Prince Rama, but that was really shitty, almost esoteric music. Only good thing were the Indian costumes. Checked out some good old Strange Boys since they played the outside stage. They seem to be getting bigger, it was really busy, and everybody was partying hard. It was about 10.15 and I kinda had it with checking out all sorts of bands, so I decided to go to Scoot Inn, where Pentagram and Eyehategod played. A lot of friends were going there, so I just wanted to hang out and have a beer and listen to some good old metal for the last hours of the festival. And that was what happened. A good way to end the festival, with a lot of familiar faces and some beers.

SXSW for me this year was cool as ever, exhausting as ever, and busier than ever. Best show I’ve seen was Charles Bradley and the Menahan Street band. That was simply amazing. Talked to a lot of people, made some really good new business connections, and got some new ideas for Incubate too. So all in all, it was more than worth the trip over here, and ofcourse, Austin is still one of the coolest cities to hang out. Would love to get back in june, when the Chaos in Tejas festival is one. One of the best line-ups for a festival I’ve ever seen.