I’m just back from the SXSW Music Conference in Austin where KCRW broadcast Morning Becomes Eclectic live featuring Sons & Daughters, Meredith Bragg and the US radio debut of songstress Duffy.
You can check out all these great shows on KCRW.com/ SXSW along with blogs and audio clips by the KCRW crew and yours truly – a quick synopsis of what I got up to includes interviewing Ed Harcourt who had just had a mad 24 hours involving kissing a pig and hiring a hearse, chatting to Gus of Willoughby and Sam of Sia’s band at the Spin party, interviewing The Black Ghosts about their forthcoming CD, returning to The Enchanted Forest and swimming in Barton Springs – all on very little food or sleep which is par for the course for everyone attending the festival.
So back to this week’s Global Gig Guide where threes a charm as we head to a trio of music festivals at ski resorts – first to the inaugural Tignes Fest in the French Alps; to Mayrhofen in Austria for Snowbombing and then a return trip to France for the Altitude Festival. Then for something completely different, at least topographically speaking, we’ll go south to Australia for V Festival.
Tignes Fest is a new mountainous music event held in one of the best and highest ski resorts in the world. Taking place April 17-20 its curated by three UK radio DJs – Eddie Temple Morris from XFM, Kissy Sell Out from BBC Radio 1 and Loose Cannons from Kiss FM. The line up features DJs and live bands – and not the usual suspects either – names on the bill include Autokratz ,Boy8- bit and Poney Poney – so expect a mixture of electronic punk and funk.
Now we head east to Mayerhofen in Austria for Snowbombing ‘Piste by Day, Beats by Night’ where they are rolling out the big guns – and I don’t mean snow cannons as they have had plenty of the white stuff this season – the line up includes Madness, Freestylers, DJ Yoda & Annie Nightingale. The Artic Disco is sold out but you can still get tickets to The Backcountry party – it takes place on the Tux Glacier in a 200 year old farmhouse; attendees can imbibe on a local brew made from alpine plants that - combined with a lack of oxygen at such altitude- gives quite the buzz.
And for the third music ski event, we return France’s Meribel in the heart of Les Trois Vallees for Altitude Fest; calling itself Europes biggest Alpine Festival, it features the ‘taking the piste’ comedy tour, music from Norman Jay, Hed Kandi, Hoxton Whores, Grand National and the Dub Pistols plus lots of expert
snow boarders, skiers and sky divers to keep you enthralled.
Heading away from the ski resorts and south of the equator, The Global Gig Guide finds itself in Australia for V Festival. Taking place from March 29th to April 6th the festival takes place in Melbourne, Perth, the Gold Coast and Sydney featuring… Air, Roisin Murphy, CSS, The Presets, Queens of The Stone Age, And the one and only Duran Duran!!
That’s it for another edition of The Global Gig Guide. If you want to hear it again you can download it as a podcast on KCRW.com or I Tunes. Otherwise check back with us next week for more information on Global Gigging. The Global Gig Guide is produced for KCRW.com by JC Swiatek and the theme music is composed by The Plush Interiors.