Young Person's Guide To Finding Good Music In SXSW 2011

This year's South By Southwest will feature so many bands to see, that it is almost impossible to know which shows to attend.
Sure, you can go to the big shows like The Strokes or Queen Of The, but between us - do you really attend a festival to see bands you already know?

The fun part about a festival is discovering bands you don't know. They can be from the US, or from a different part of the world, but one thing is for sure - it'll be exciting.

The web comes to help and features many ways to find out about the best bands to watch in Sxsw 2011.
You can read blogs and blog chains e Pitchfork Media Altered Zone, Elbo.ws or Hype Machine, this will give you good recommendations for music to watch. You can also try blogs like this sxsw 2011 recommendations blog and there are many others out there. You can try to find SXSW podcasts on iTunes and others, and find compilations made by people, with their own recommendations.

You can also try social networks websites, like Facebook with fan pages dedicated to the subject or go through the various Lastfm, and Linkedin groups, and also search for the term #sxsw in Twitter.

Try search for showcases in SXSW. You'll find many labels that host a showcase like Western Vinyl, Anova Music and others

So basically, there are many resources you can find, pick up your fav music discovery method and start browsing through your sxsw 2011 bands to watch. I'm sure you'll find some very cool acts to see, aside from the very obvious bands...

Enjoy!

At times, it is easy for The Eastern Sea to forget that Austin, Texas is home. And for that reason, their self-titled record (in two parts) plays much like a travelogue, a recollection of distant places that tend to mimic their own, somehow foreign, neighborhoods. Musically, The Eastern Sea combines swelling post-rock-like percussion, energetic and melodic bass guitar, lofty wurlizter, synthesizer pads, and finger-picked guitar that can either float above the ground or come down like a ton of bricks. As a band, The Eastern Sea tends to mimic their own musical aesthetic, sometimes swelling to a massive 11-piece collective featuring string and brass instruments, and sometimes simplifying down to the core players in the group: Tomas Garcia-Olano (Bass/Keys), Zach Duran (Percussion), Kevin Thomas (Trumpet/Percussion), and Matthew Hines (Guitar/Vocals/Keys) are the solid foundation on which the band is built. The sound and unique sense of place heard on The Eastern Sea's two-part self-titled release also has much to do with the band's unique recording and music writing process. Having just graduated from St. Edward's University in Austin, Texas as valedictorian of his senior class, singer/guitarist/songwriter Matthew Hines has had to work, along with the other full-time students in the band, to create something special despite an often insane schedule. As the band continues to grow on a regional and national level, what 90.5 KUT, Austin's nationally-renowned public radio, has ...