Fun and technology at Austin City Limits (ACL)

A couple of week I was fortunate enough to attend the Austin City Limits music Festival. It's held in Austin, TX (college town) every year and presents a wide assortment of roots and indie music.

In the last couple of years it has been held in October to avoid the massive heat produced by in September. Instead of 105° F and high humidity it was 80°s and occasional rain. Nothing could dampen the enthusiasm for acts ranging from A-Trak and Crystal Castles to Florence + The Machine, M83, and Esperanza Spalding.

The biggest surprise was Gotye. Unless you live under a rock you have probably heard Gotye's hit "Somebody I Used to Know", which has been played to death on the radio this summer. I was curious and a little skeptical about how he would recreate his music in a live situation, but the skepticism was unfounded. There were lots of background noises from a variety of sources being triggered by a variety of controllers and the show was synced to video (or maybe it was the other way around).

Since Ableton recently announced Live 9.0 I thought I would include a link to this interview with Walter "Wally" De Backer aka Gotye that Ableton was kind enough to allow us to link to. It's a pretty good description of how the band makes it all happen.