What happens when you invite the most innovative electronic music and video artists from around the world to Charm City for a three-night event? You get the Once Twice Sound Festival. And with one night on the Hopkins own campus, anyone remotely interested in seeing how the electronic music scene is shaping across the globe, should come to this event.
"There really isn't an event like this anywhere else on the East Coast," says Ben Parris, co-organizer of the event.
The festival moves from the Ottobar on Thursday, April 15 to The Supreme Imperial, a cool new music and art space warehouse, on Friday, April 16, and closes with Saturday's show at the Second Decade Society Room in the Mattin Center. And this year the organizers added a free international video art screening before Saturdays show in Mattin 227.
"This festival is unique in that it offers such a wide range of electronic music. Each night is refined to present one style, which is completely different from the other nights," Parris says.
Thursday will present break beats and twisted hip hop, showcasing artists like Jimmy Edgar, who is coming out with a much anticipated album on Warp records this summer.
Friday's show will feature more traditional dance-techno, and the atmosphere will be more like a club party.
The closing show will showcase minimalistic electronica and will have a major emphasis on video integration with the audio performance.
"We paired audio and visual artists up to present the combination using [computer] programs like Max/MSP/Jitter. In Saturday's performance, video is emphasized as much as audio."
"Every year its been really fun," says Parris, who has been running the event for four years. "When performers come to Baltimore, the crowds are really responsive, and it really makes an impression on the performers that Baltimore is a good place to come, that the people here are open-minded.
And this year, the venues match perfectly to the type of music being played." The Ottobar is as good a place as any to hear those head-nodding bass lines. The Supreme Imperial, an artsy warehouse, is the perfect venue to present dance inducing techno.
Finally, the Second Decade Society Room, has already been the perfect venue for both of the showcases that Nerven put on earlier this year as prequels to the Once Twice Sound Festival.
The Once Twice Festival is still relatively unknown, but that doesn't stop it from bringing acts that are on the cutting edge of electronica across the globe.
This year's festival highlights artists mainly from San Francisco, Detroit, Montreal and Berlin. "America hasn't really been exposed to these kinds of newer electronica, and so there's not really an infrastructure to present it like trance or other kinds of music you'll find in the club scene in America.
So we're hoping the festival gives these incredibly talented artists a way to get the exposure that they already have in places like Europe," says Parris.
As a dance fiend, I'm looking forward to going to the Friday night show, especially because the Baltimore rave scene has lately been centered around warehouses. Ben Parris feels that most people would find Thursday night's hip-hop show easiest to take in.
All three of the venues look like promising treats with all that music and video talent. If you can't make it to all three, the best bet is to least catch the free international video art screening on Saturday afternoon.
