Pitchfork

Jeremy Jay [Emo's Lounge; 9 p.m.]

The almost-hidden space underneath Emo's on 6th Street, the cavernous Emo's Lounge, provided a perfect setting for one of SXSW's rather hidden new artists. K Records signee Jeremy Jay, looking like a very young Thurston Moore with his shaggy blonde mop and hunched shoulders, brought a traditional four-piece and hopped, pranced, and strutted across the stage for his set's 45 minutes. Debuting mostly new material-- neither from his well-recieved 2007 EP Airwalker nor his soon-to-be-released LP A Place Where We Could Go-- Jay even galloped along to a tune whose chorus went "Giddyup horse, giddyup."



The mostly sedate crowd finally got the message in the middle of the set, when he played EP track "Airwalker", and began moving their heads in tandem with his campy sway. He sounded less like Thurston and more like Bowie, but every time he brushed his hair out of his face or arced his shoulders around the mic stand, there was a pretty eerie resemblance. But not quite as eerie as what happened next.





Bjørn Torske [Thirsty Nickel; 10 p.m.]

Heading over to the Smalltown Supersound showcase just a couple blocks away, the real Thurston Moore was standing outside the Thirsty Nickel, like a silent clarion inviting in-the-know folks to the night's hippest show. He had been there to see Sunburned Hand of the Man, whose set had just finished, and after hanging around a few minutes looking dapper in a white fedora, he disappeared to quietly endorse some other showcase.



That didn't stop a nice crowd from gathering to hear Scandinavia's greatest DJs in one of the unlikeliest bars in the world-- on an ordinary night you could imagine a cowboy-hat-clad group of line dancers or Longhorn frat types filling the Thirsty Nickel-- but on Wednesday night, all it took was another shaggy blond pelt and Ableton to gather a mix of all shapes and sizes. Bjørn Torkse whipped up a few "live" tracks, looping some homemade percussion (read: taking a drumstick to a block of wood), a carrot-shaped shaker, and a banjo. A minor glitch in the sound system aside, he warmed up the crowd nicely for his fellow Norwegian Diskjokke.





Diskjokke [Thirsty Nickel; 11 p.m.]

Eschewing his labelmate's kitchen-sink looping tricks, Diskjokke's setup was simple and clean, with just a laptop and some basic controls, but the bass-heavy disco sound he unleashed actually got the Texas crowd to do some strutting without thumbing their belt buckles. Halfway through his set, the Nickel was nearing capacity and a crowd had begun gathering around the windows behind the DJ booth on the sidewalks outside. Who needs Thurston's seal of approval when you have blisteringly loud space disco to entice passers-by?





Lindstrøm [Thirsty Nickel; 12 p.m.]

But of course the night's big draw was Hans-Peter Lindstrøm, the Norwegian DJ whose collaborations with Prins Thomas and Solale have garnered him wide praise. The "space disco" pioneer debuted his first proper solo album in its entirety and, well, suffice it to say, if you liked It's a Feedelity Affair, you're gonna love Where You Go I Go to, arriving on June 2 on Feedelity/Smalltown. Expanding his airy interstellar sound, the italo synths and their icy chords are still there, but the sound is much more massive, and the crowd reacted in kind. Unable to control themselves, the audience was nearly falling over the railing in front of the DJ booth, trying to snap a shot or just dancing without care.