April 24th Chicago Event to Stage Four “Quarters” of Music
Using Innovative Technology and Interactive, Fan-Driven Cues

The forward-thinking band Umphrey’s McGee will carve out new terrain in musical interactivity with their fans at the first “UMBowl,” an unprecedented 4-quarter evening-long concert on Saturday, April 24th, at Lincoln Hall in the group’s hometown of Chicago.

Umphrey’s, which has long forged a close bond with its national fan base through technological innovation, will explore fresh frontiers in the five-hour event, styled to emulate a football game with four “quarters” of unique musical performances that will actually be generated by audience input. Half the night’s music will be determined by text messaging on “gameday” itself.

The first quarter (Q1) will be an acoustic set entirely chosen by attendees; ticket holders will receive ballots and cast votes on the songs to be performed. Q2 will be a wholly improvised performance driven by bi-directional texting, sifted and delivered by “offensive coordinator” (and longtime Umphrey’s sound caresser) Kevin Browning to the band, which will then use the audience input to construct their jams. Q3 will be an all-request segment, with songs again determined by pre-balloting from the audience members. Fans will be able to vote not just on song selection but actually how those songs are arranged and varied from their original form. In Q4, the live audience will actually act as the group’s quarterback, “calling audibles” to direct the course of a free-flowing set via text messages sent to Browning in response to choices projected on an in-house screen.

The text-messaging element of UMBowl, powered by Mozes, was first employed by Umphrey’s McGee at their Stew Art (or “S2”) series, launched in fall 2009. Hosted as freestanding events before Umphrey’s shows in select tour markets, the series is a crowd-sourced improvisation experiment, in which all the music performed by the group on stage is entirely directed by S2 audience members. Sold-out crowds of 50 fans submit their ideas by texting descriptive words, phrases, and pop culture references to the Umphrey’s mobile interface, which are then interpreted by the band.

Umphrey’s McGee had previously taken new approaches to delivering their music to the fans. Before their most recent studio recording, Mantis, was released in January 2009, the collection was made available for pre-order in an interesting way. The more Mantis pre-orders were received, the more free bonus content was received. Fans “unlocked” levels of content by getting more of their friends to pre-order the album.

The band was also among the first group of performers to offer songs at Rock Band Network. The much buzzed-about video game platform works with Xbox video game systems, and allows bands to offer fans a way to dig into their favorite group’s music in ways they have never been able to before.

UMBowl tickets went on sale last Friday and sold out in just minutes.

For the many out-of-town fans attending UMBowl, the band, together with long-standing travel partners CID Entertainment, offered travel packages for the event. Included in each package are tickets toUMBowl, luxury accommodations at the new Hotel Palomar in downtown Chicago, a drink package for the pre-party at the Umphrey’s hometown hang The Store, a personalized UMBowl jersey, gameday transportation, and more. For further information, go to: www.cidentertainment.com/home/umbowl2010.php

This news came to a great disappointment to me. 10KLF shared an amazing seven years with artists and attendees and I only got to experience one of those years, 2009. I regret not making the trek up north in past years to experience this unique festival. I feel like I missed the boat. 10KLF was truly an extraordinary find for those who ventured all the way up to Soo Pass Ranch. With all the music festivals popping up these days 10KLF succeeded in maintaining an organic, simple, yet sublime music experience with both its environment and artist selection.

The organizers of 10KLF stated that they love their ardent fans and they will do their best to keep the music coming. Well, thanks 10KLF for the love and music! Lets all keep our fingers crossed that this news is not the start of a bitter trend for the summer of 2010.

Coco is one of the resident festival experts here at the sight. She attended 10000 Lakes last summer along with a dozen other festivals.

Rothbury was unique because of sights like the enchanted Sherwood Forrest, a dreamlike experience that festival goers could be a part of. Magnificent light displays, secret burlesque shows, great music and dancing aliens are just a few marvels that will be missed this summer.

It is important to note that this is not the end of Rothbury, only a bump in the road. Madison House Presents Jeremy Stein explains, “The result for this year is that we are not able to move forward with the integrity and high standards that we demand from ourselves and for the festival.” Despite the 2010 postponement, organizers intend to continue the Rothbury in 2011. We will keep you posted on any news regarding the future of Rothbury.

The Festival: Snowbombing 2010
Location: Mayrhofen, Austria
Dates: April 5th – 10th, 2010
Price: You’re on your own…the full price list is right here.
Official Site: Snowbombing.com
Lineup:

The Big Snow Festival is coming up this March 14-21, 2010. Picture a kick ass music festival held at a European ski resort. Ride all day, party all night. Sounds like a plan.

The festival is being held in Andorra, a super tiny country tucked into the Pyrenees on the French/Spain border. The package deal covers flights from both Manchester and Gatwick to Toulouse, seven nights accommodation, return transfers and access to all the events from just £399.

Think you can handle a week of this? Here’s the lineup so far.

They’re giving away a pair of tickets every day until October 25th.

[via Fuse TV]

Photo Credit: Blip Festival

Bust out your Game Boys, the Blip Festival is back for its fourth year of low-tech music magic. It takes place in New York City December 17th-19th. The first batch of performers were released this week. This is only a partial lineup so stay tuned.

Here’s a description of the festival from the site:

Entering its fourth year of celebrating the best and brightest from the realm of chipmusic and its related disciplines, the festival showcases the use of the former heavyweights of computing such as the Commodore 64 and Amiga, the Atari ST and 2600, and the Nintendo Entertainment System and Game Boy to create arresting music and visual art.

Blip Lineup 2009 as of 10/18
Bit Shifter
Chromix
Disasterpeace
failotron
Fighter X
I, Cactus
Je Deviens DJ En Trois Jours
Leeni
little-scale
Nullsleep
Rainbowdragoneyes
The Hunters
The J. Arthur Keenes Band

[via Blip Festival]

Buzzsugar.com

The gorgeous and warm weather on Saturday fit the bill for the lineup that had a heavier concentration of electronic music and DJs (like MGMT and Girl Talk), while on Sunday I bundled up and chilled out to The Decemberists and Grizzly Bear. All in all it was an awesome weekend that ended with a bang as The Flaming Lips closed down the party. [Read the rest of the review...]

San Jose Mercury News

What most differentiates this show from the dozens of other annual festivals is, of course, the setting: Treasure Island, a place that many Bay Area residents have never even visited, offers a simply unparalleled view. There’s something magical about listening to music while looking out at the water, both the Golden Gate and Bay bridges, and, most dramatically, the San Francisco skyline. [Read the rest of the review...]

Sustainablog

Considering that several thousand people crammed into the festival space on Treasure Island we think that overall they handled the transportation issue in a pretty Green way. We made our way to the festival via zero-emission Bauer buses that picked most of the masses up at AT&T Park. The only real griping we heard came from East Bay attendees who said that they had to drive or take BART to SF instead of having shuttle buses come to the East Bay as well. [Read the rest of the review...]

The Bay Bridged

3:37:21 PM: One dude already crowdsurfing before Dan Deacon’s set. Deacon begins by showing the crowd a dance from the future. Then mayhem ensues. [Read the rest of the review...]

Prefix

I’m sitting next to a girl I just met mid-afternoon. She says, “These are all the types of bands I want to listen to alone in my room.”And it’s true. Treasure Island’s second-day lineup consists of bands with slow tempos and sensitive leanings, a major temperature change from the electronic acts the day before. Aside from the cooler music, a serious drop in degrees has festivalgoers shivering. You could name this festival after flannel. I discover that Vetiver is fabulous music to buy a scarf to. [Read the rest of the review...]

Lucky for all of us, Consequence of Sound has released an excellent guide to point you in the direction of the some of the best acts. In their words:

We’re going to break it down (and possibly build it up, maybe) for you. The focus? Not on which acts you need to check out — because that would take away from the whole experience of “discovering — but rather an easy-to-define set of parameters.

You can’t go wrong following their picks which include local bands, British artists, and the big acts that you should definitely catch. Check out their guide right here.

[via Consequence of Sound]

Not entirely sure what this about, but it involves Legos, video games, and music so it must be completely awesome.

Be amongst the first public in the UK to play LEGO Rock Band!

Perform on stage with other SUPER-GROUPS!

Make your own festival crowd!

GameCity comes to a musical, plastic, sublime close with the first EVER Brickstock festival of music, play and LEGO bricks.

We’ve laid down the turf, built the stage and provided the bricks. All we need you to bring is the rock. LEGO Rock Band, the supremely awesome new game from TTGames will be here, tuned-up and turned up to 11.

It takes place October 31, 2009, 10 am at Market Square Arena in the UK. We can only hope a version goes down here in the US.

[via GameCity]