Crucial Concerts for the Coming Week

Kaitlyn Aurelia Smith (Courtesy of Giant Noise)

lookOUT Fest With Kaitlyn Aurelia Smith, the Album Leaf, Mary Lattimore, and More

Long Center for the Performing Arts, Saturday 3, noon

The Long Center's dramatic exterior kind of looks like a descending UFO, appropriate for a convergence of eclectically experimental and tranquilly otherworldly sounds. KUTX's Soundfounder – aka weekly electronic music specialist Andrew P. Brown – sculpts a genre-merging lineup around synths and pristine production. The deejay co-presents with independent booking agency outer/most, reps of Kaitlyn Aurelia Smith, the Album Leaf, and Julianna Barwick. It's rare to see this much nationally recognized electronic music locally in one night.

Anchoring the first-year fest, Washington native Smith actually launched her soundscaping on Austin label Western Vinyl. There, she released 2015's Euclid to revive the Sixties Buchla 100 synthesizer, which the composer loves for its unpredictability. After playing their second-ever show in Austin (South by Southwest 2000 at Club de Ville), the Album Leaf combined delayed Rhodes piano and guitar on One Day I'll Be on Time – of which principal Jimmy Lavalle offered a 20th-anniversary reimagining last year.

Raised in reverberating Southern church sanctuaries, Barwick's immersive vocal loops sustain the producer through collaborations from Odesza to Philip Glass. Also visiting from California, as are all of the above, harpist Mary Lattimore takes the classical instrument to unheard depths on newest West Kensington, composed with guitarist neighbor Paul Sukeena during pandemic dog days. On the local front, electro-acoustic duo Felt Out expands the melodic pop framework, while the Kraken Quartet tries tingly integration of percussion and gadgetry. – Rachel Rascoe

Holy Fawn

Shoegaze, dream-pop, and slow-moving, emotionally tilted post-metal are probably the most disgustingly oversaturated niche music nerd markets. A band merging all three, shouldn't that be totally intolerable? Surprise! This ascendent Phoenix quartet completely transcends all genre politicking, merging fuzz-pedal crush with ethereal swoon as well as any band since Deftones. Drop-tuned, mystic-minded tone poems that come across like prehistory's burliest Viking lost in an enchanted forest of his own unexamined psychic baggage. Opening is Boston quartet Astronoid, whose soaring hyper-rock similarly resists classification (imagine Slowdive rewriting Coheed and Cambria songs using guitar lines borrowed from Alcest). – Julian Towers

Tav Falco's Panther Burns

It's been 10 years since Tav Falco played in Austin, but at 77, the iconoclastic filmmaker, author, and leader of the Southern art-punk Panther Burns returns to town with a new EP, Club Car Zodiac. Since his 1980 debut LP, Behind the Magnolia Curtain, Falco has seared with a suave grit as his cabaret-inflected surf rumble and raw garage ethos filters through a darkly hypnotic Memphis rock & roll lens. Panther Burns' Italian guitar virtuoso Mario Monterosso opens with his own set, along with the equally rebellious country ruckus of locals the Hickoids and Cunto! – Doug Freeman

Circle Jerks, 7 Seconds, Negative Approach

Never let it be said that reunited Los Angeles hardcore pioneers Circle Jerks don't go several extra miles for their fans. The original April 26 date was part of a rescheduled 2020 40th-anniversary tour, curtailed by the pandemic. Then legendary lead howler Keith Morris contracted COVID himself. The entire springtime touring cast – Morris, guitarist Greg Hetson, bassist Zander Schloss, and Queens of the Stone Age drummer Joey Castillo, plus fellow Eighties HC vets 7 Seconds and Negative Approach – give Austin two makeup dates. – Tim Stegall

Bernell Jones II

Saxophonist/keyboardist Bernell Jones II hails from New York via Memphis, Tenn., and his music reflects a balance between those two locales: the Big Apple's fabled jazz presence and Memphis' beloved soul music. Mentored by veterans Greg Tardy and Vincent Herring, Jones plays with a lyrical style that's made him a valuable hired gun for Ms. Lauryn Hill, Wyclef Jean, and the Philip Harper Quintet. Backed by the cream of ATX's jazz scene, including bassist Ryan Hagler, drummer Daniel Dufour, and rising keyboard star Dayne Reliford, Jones will no doubt preview his new EP, Supernov-a, which drops the day after. – Michael Toland

Buddy Holly's Birthday

Despite Buddy Holly perishing in a 1959 plane crash at the humanly nascent but musically mature age of 22, his percussionist Jerry Ivan Allison kept their big beat alive an additional six decades. Passing Aug. 22, the Hillsboro native stood tall and Texan even when this stringer met him in 2004 – as formidable as Holly's older cowboy sibs at one of his Lubbock birthday bashes. Rave on about the skinny, horn-rimmed Strat-wielder who spearheaded rock & roll with West Texas royalty Jimmie Dale Gilmore and Kimmie Rhodes; Austin sovereigns Rosie Flores, BettySoo, and Graham Weber; and full sets from panhandlers Mason & the Gin Line and homegrown honky-tonkers Cale & the 45s. Oh boy! – Raoul Hernandez

Megadeth

The well-tenured Los Angeles thrash metal outfit double dips today – the band supports Five Finger Death Punch at COTA before hosting a record signing Downtown at Waterloo Records. – Derek Udensi

Rico Nasty

There's no telling what sound the DMV native will emit when pressing play. She's a rager who's dabbled into new terrain such as hyperpop in recent years. Kehlani headlines. – Derek Udensi

Pi'erre Bourne

"Yo Pierre, you wanna come out here?" That producer tag sampled from The Jamie Foxx Show took on a life of its own in 2017 as his vibrant instrumentals provided the foundation for Playboi Carti ("Magnolia") to break through into the mainstream of hip-hop. Though the Queens, N.Y., artist still crafts beats for others, he now primarily raps over his own supply. His latest project, Good Movie, comes out tomorrow. – Derek Udensi