Events, KCRW Music Announcement

KCRW Announces Showcases at SXSW 2013

KCRW Showcases at SXSW

Wednesday, March 13

3-6pm – Convention Center (Radio Day Stage)

Devendra Banhart ** Jake Bugg**
**BOY**

8pm-2am – Haven

Toro y Moi * Atlas Genius* Ra Ra Riot
Flight Facilities * Tom Odell* Wild Belle

Los Angeles-based public radio station KCRW (89.9 FM and KCRW.com) is kicking off SXSW on Wednesday, March 13, with TWO official showcases open to anyone with a festival badge or wristband (no RSVP needed). All of the bands appearing on the lineup have exciting new music, released recently or forthcoming, that is getting major KCRW airplay and will be a big part of our programming in the year ahead.

KCRW takes over the Radio Day Stage at the Austin Convention Center, which has some of the best sound in the city, from 3-6pm. We’ll have sets from singer-songwriter Devendra Banhart, UK sensation Jake Bugg and German pop duo BOY, who will be making their SXSW debut. Find us on the 4th Flr – what better way to start your week of music watching?

We return to Haven for a night of KCRW favorites, including the most played artist at the station right now Toro y Moi, who continue to produce beat-driven compositions that are rife with emotion. Brother-led Aussie band Atlas Genius have a hit single with the undeniable “Trojans” and we’ll hear more danceable pop from their debut “When It Was Now”.

They’ll be joined by indie stalwarts Ra Ra Riot, who have shifted gears on their new album, full of songs with a soulful electronic R&B pulse, as well as UK newcomer Tom Odell, whose powerful debut is due in April. Chicago-based siblings Wild Belle make expertly crafted, groovy dream-pop. Australian indie electro duo Flight Facilities will close the evening with a special live vocalist.

KCRW will also be the official radio sponsor for Filter Magazine’s Culture Collide at Cedar Street. The three-day showcase series runs March 14-16 from 11am to 6pm. The lineup will be announced soon.

Music Director Jason Bentley and Program Director for Music Anne Litt will be broadcasting KCRW’s signature music show Morning Becomes Eclectic live from Austin during the conference, including a live performance from Bajofondo, the Argentine-Uruguayan tango fusion collective led by Grammy-winning producer Gustavo Santaolalla.

Check out our full schedule of activities below and stay tuned for updates.

WEDNESDAY, March 13

WHAT: KCRW’s Official Day Showcase
TIME: 3 – 6pm
WHERE: Radio Day Stage is in Ballroom D on the 4th floor of the Austin Convention Center

SET TIMES

3p – BOY
4pm – Jake Bugg
5pm – Devendra Banhart

WHAT: KCRW’s Official Night Showcase
TIME: 8pm – 2a
WHERE: Haven
409B Colorado Austin, TX 78701

SET TIMES

8p — Wild Belle
9p — Tom Odell
10p — Ra Ra Riot
11p — Atlas Genius
12a — Toro y Moi
1a — Flight Facilities

KCRW:
KCRW 89.9FM is an NPR affiliate serving Southern California and licensed to Santa Monica College. The public radio station represents cutting edge radio at its best, presenting an eclectic mix of independent music, news, talk and arts programming. The terrestrial signal serves Los Angeles, Orange, and Ventura counties, as well as parts of San Diego, San Bernardino, Kern, and Santa Barbara counties and the greater Palm Springs area. KCRW’ s programming is internationally renowned and available worldwide at KCRW.com. KCRW offers an all-music channel, Eclectic24, an all news channel and on-air simulcast. . Podcasts and archives of our locally-produced programs and live band performances are available on our website, as well as on our smartphone apps for the iPhone, Android and Blackberry. KCRW’s acclaimed Music Mine app for iPad is dedicated to music discovery. www.kcrw.com

# # #

Rachel Reynolds
Music Publicity Director
KCRW 89.9FM
1900 Pico Blvd.
Santa Monica, CA 90405
(310) 314-4625 DIRECT
rachel.reynolds@kcrw.org
http://twitter.com/RachelRkcrw
http://blogs.kcrw.com/musicnews/

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Programming, Station Announcement

KCRW Strikes New Chord with The Organist

KCRW Strikes a New Chord with The Organist

Los Angeles Public Radio Station Partners with McSweeney’s to Launch New Podcast

KCRW has joined forces with San Francisco publishing house, McSweeney’s for another joint venture: The Organist. An experimental arts-and-culture program, the new monthly podcast features stories, interviews, reviews, comic radio dramas and more, produced by editors of the award-winning magazine, the Believer and KCRW. The inaugural episode became available the first weekend in February with new episodes available on demand, monthly throughout the year.

The scope of the podcast reflects that of the print edition of The Believer: its contributors take a thoughtful approach to pop culture, along with an irreverent attitude toward the highbrow. From philosophy to daytime TV, from poetry to martial arts, the show scrutinizes and interrogates the world with an affectionate and rigorous intelligence.

Episode One: Little Language Machine, features a variety of interviews and short stories:

  • The short-story master George Saunders talks about how riffing as a teenage benchwarmer led to the richly imagined voices of his fiction.
  • Parks and Recreation‘s Nick Offerman explains the tortured etymology of the word “podcast” (it’s a conflation of the words paw and broadcast — a radio show with claws).
  • Critic Greil Marcus considers a reissue of the first Bikini Kill EP and a new novel by Percival Everett.
  • Amber Scorah tells the story of her defection from the Jehovah’s Witnesses while working as a missionary in Shanghai.
  • Pitchfork editor Brandon Stosuy presents five five-word record reviews of excellent new guitar rock.
  • The electronic duo Matmos takes a song from their new album apart, piece by piece, revealing its brilliant, pulsating innards.
  • A new(ish) film casts a shotgun microphone as its protagonist;

Listeners can visit the website to access “Web Extras” like an extended interview with George Saunders. Find that and those here.

This is the second partnership between KCRW and McSweeney’s. The two most recently collaborated for a one-hour radio drama, “Wayne Coyne’s Human Head-Shaped Tumor,” which starred Flaming Lips frontman Wayne Coyne. The bizarre, radio adventure in the style of Mercury Theatre’s War of the Worlds, featured the music from the Flaming Lips, Bill Callahan, Okkervil River, Eleanor Friedberger, Nico Muhly, Oneida and Ed Droste from Grizzly Bear. The special is still available to stream or download here.

For more information and to hear full episodes of The Organist, please visit www.kcrw.com/theorganist or http://www.theorganist.org/

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About The Organist:
The Organist is a monthly experimental arts-and-culture program produced and distributed by KCRW. The editors of the award-winning monthly magazine the Believer, published in San Francisco by McSweeney’s, produce ten annual episodes of the podcast, which includes reported stories, interviews, comic radio drama, reviews, and more. The scope of the podcast reflects that of the print edition: its contributors take a thoughtful approach to pop culture, along with an irreverent attitude toward the highbrow. From philosophy to daytime TV, from poetry to martial arts, the show scrutinizes and interrogates the world with an affectionate and rigorous intelligence. Pieces from the podcast grow out of stories in the magazine, and vice versa. Weaving together the voices of its contributors, which include the brightest talents in literature and the arts, the Organist is an elegant, impressionistic, funny, and sharp cultural magazine that itself becomes an object of inquiry, discussion, and wonder.

About KCRW:
KCRW 89.9FM is an NPR affiliate serving Southern California and licensed to Santa Monica College. The public radio station represents cutting edge radio at its best, presenting an eclectic mix of independent music, news, talk and arts programming. The terrestrial signal serves Los Angeles, Orange, and V entura counties, as well as parts of San Diego, San Bernardino, Kern, and Santa Barbara counties and the greater Palm Springs area. KCRW’ s programming is internationally renowned and available worldwide at KCRW.com. KCRW offers an all-music channel, Eclectic24, an all news channel and on-air simulcast. . Podcasts and archives of our locally-produced programs and live band performances are available on our website, as well as on our smartphone apps for the iPhone, Android and Blackberry. KCRW’s acclaimed Music Mine app for iPad is dedicated to music discovery.

About The Believer:
The Believer is a monthly magazine where length is no object. There are book reviews that are not necessarily timely, and that are very often very long. There are interviews that are also very long. We will focus on writers and books we like. We will give people and books the benefit of the doubt. The working title of this magazine was The Optimist.

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