Memphis Concrète festival highlights local experimental music scene

Bob Mehr | Memphis Commercial Appeal

All this weekend Crosstown Arts will be filled with the strange, exotic and challenging sounds as the venue is the scene for Memphis Concrète, an experimental electronic music festival.

Memphis Concrète is the brainchild of Robert Traxler, a veteran local musician, a member of the band The Family Ghost and more recently a solo experimental artist. In 2017, Traxler took a chance and decided to stage a small festival featuring local and regional performers at Crosstown Arts.

“I like experimental music, it’s something I’ve been into for a while and I thought it would be a fun experiment in and of itself to see what I could get together in Memphis,” says Traxler of the inaugural fest. “In the process of doing it, I ended up meeting a lot of people who were into similar kinds of music. It became this idea of how we can bring people together who weren’t otherwise seeing each other. We were realizing there was a community here.”

The first Memphis Concrète was a two-day affair, and Traxler — as well as those who performed and attended — were heartened by the results.

“I didn’t really have any expectations for what would happen or how many people would show up," he says. "It was a small deal, but it certainly exceeded my expectations. It was enough of a success that I figured it would be fun to do it again — let’s see if we can do it a little bigger and see what happens then.”

Returning to Crosstown Arts, the 2018 edition of Memphis Concrète has been expanded to three days. More than 30 artists — a mix of local, regional and national acts — are set to perform on two stages, located in the main atrium and a listening room. In addition, the festival will feature a nightly film screening with live musical accompaniment, and there will be several ongoing sound installations in and around the venue.

In conjunction with this year’s event, Traxler has just released “Sounds in Geometry Series, Vol 1” a compilation that features many of the performers at Memphis Concrète 2018. Aiding Traxler in the effort with this year’s festival is a group of friends that includes Amy Schaftlein and Christopher Williams of Sonospheres, the Memphis-produced podcast exploring experimental music.

While the notable names at the festival will include national acts like Wolf Eyes and Circuit des Yeux, the bulk of the performers hail from the Mid-South and cover a wide range of music within the experimental milieu, from hip-hop-oriented artist IMAKEMADBEATS to rock musicians/singer-songwriters Linda Heck and Mike Doughty.

“You start looking around, and you find more types of [experimental] music in town than you would have expected and more people doing it,” Traxler says. “Which is exciting to me.”

Traxler notes that Crosstown Arts has been an important part of the growth of the local experimental scene. The venue was the site of the successful Mellotron Variations concert in 2016 (and its sequel earlier this year). Having a non-nightclub space has provided a hospitable home for these types of performances and events to flourish in the Bluff City.

“I probably wouldn’t have thought something like this would have been possible at all just a few years ago,” Traxler says. “I don’t know if it signals a change in Memphis, but maybe people are being more open to new things.”

Traxler is optimistic that Memphis Concrète can become an annual event.

“I’m definitely hoping there will be a year three,” he says. “At the moment, I’ve got so much going into this, and my eyes aren’t looking anywhere past this weekend right now.”

Memphis Concrète

Friday through Sunday at Crosstown Arts East Atrium, 1350 Concourse Ave.

Tickets are $15 a day or $40 for a weekend pass. Available at Eventbrite.

Friday

Listening Room

5 p.m. Noiserpuss

5:40 p.m. M. Geddes Gengras

6:20 p.m. Cloudland Canyon

7 p.m. Mike Honeycutt

7:55 p.m. IMAKEMADBEATS

9 p.m. Circuit des Yeux

Atrium

5:10 p.m. signalsundertests

5:50 p.m. Kristina Warren

6:30 p.m. Mike Doughty

7:15 p.m. “The Legend of Hell House” (film screening with live score)

Saturday

Listening Room

4 p.m. STARFIGHTER YELLOW SUPEROVERDRIVE

4:40 p.m. The Pop Ritual

5:20 p.m. Leslie Deere

6 p.m. Aesthetic Barrier

6:40 p.m. Tavishi

7:20 p.m. George Clanton

8:15 p.m. Gel Set

9:15 p.m. Negative Gemini

Atrium

4:10 p.m. A Minor Motion Picture

4:50 p.m. Andrew Raffo Dewar

5:30 p.m. Freak Effect

6:10 p.m. Sci Fi Industries

7:15 p.m. “The Day the Earth Stood Still” (film screening with live score)

Sunday

Listening Room

3 p.m. Disco Volante

3:40 p.m. Alyssa Moore

4:20 p.m. Spookstina

5:00 p.m. WGM

5:40 p.m. Linda Heck

6:35 p.m. Optic Sink

7:35 p.m. Alex Zhang Hungtai

8:30 p.m. Wolf Eyes

Atrium

3:10 p.m. Avery Vaughn

3:50 p.m. Jack the Giant Killer

4:30 p.m. The E.G.G.G.

5:30 p.m. “Woman in the Moon” (film screening with live score)