DAY FOR NIGHT: So Soon in Houston!

I was standing in Times Square in bitterly cold temps last week waiting for an 11:57 p.m. immersive art project called “Counting Sheep” to start, which is where I realized that I had an art addiction. A bad one.

That’s why I’m so excited about going down to the Day for Night festival this coming weekend in Houston.
The festival combines innovative visual art with some really great musical acts!

The tradition of putting visual art and popular music together goes back to at least the 60s, where the psychedelic bands would display the patterns produced by colored oils projected via a transparency projector onto a large backdrop. Every show was a unique and every visual performance was different

Putting modern visual digital artists with innovative musical acts is another take on this combination of art and music.

Day for Night is in its second year, but it’ll be the first year that I’ve been able to go. Unlike many an outside festival, Day for Night includes art and is in a warehouse space* in downtown Houston. Given the unpredictable weather this time of year, I’m glad there will be a roof!

While I’m less familiar with the visual artists, I’m thrilled about seeing the Bjork “curated art exhibit” and the virtual reality performance”Mouthmantra VR” which is a film from inside her mouth as she is singing. How crazy is that? A music industry friend who recently saw the Bjork VR show in London said it was really cool, which makes me even more excited!

Also exciting is Ezra Miller, a 20 year-old visual designer who already has a solid history in art. Yet seeing his work when he’s only 20 still seems like getting in on the ground floor!

Of the musical acts at the festival, I’m personally super -excited to see The Jesus and Mary Chain, The Butthole Surfers and whatever Bjork may be bringing up in her DJ sets.

I’ve seen some of these acts before. I saw The Jesus and Mary Chain in a converted gas station in Austin when Nine Inch Nails was their opening act, then heard them a couple of years ago at a hella crowded South by Southwest event at the Belmont where I was too short to see the band over the tall dudes once I finally made it into the venue.

The only time I’ve even seen Bjork was on a day when I woke up in my childhood bedroom in the Houston suburbs and ended up in a Bjork show in Riga, Latvia. Wired on decongestants for an ear issue, I was awake for every mile in between. My Latvian friends finally took me home when they noticed I was swaying from side to side, not in time with the music.

Bjork has been an artistic innovator for a long time, putting out some of the crazier music videos ever made, and I can’t wait to see what does with virtual reality!

I’ve never seen artistic innovators the Butthole Surfers, but I listened to their album Electriclarryland on repeat for nearly a year.

The group broke up , but is back together. It’ll be my first time seeing them, and I could not be any more excited.

I’m also SO EXCITED about seeing S U R V I V E. a band from Austin who did the music for the Netflix series “Stranger Things” and that I tried to get a friend to book for an Austin festival earlier this fall.

In another film/music crossover, film director John Carpenter is going to be at Day for Night. Yes, that’s the same John Carpenter. Yes, that’s the same John Carpenter who brought you “Halloween” and “Escape From New York.”

One of the artists whom I knew nothing about before reading about him for the festival booking is Herman Kolgen, whom the festival describes as “an autokinetic sculptor.”

Day for Night is part of a new trend in music festivals, trying to make them about more than a bunch of bands playing in a lightly converted field. (For example the Sound On Sound festival outside Austin earlier this year took place in an off-season Renaissance park, as will as the upcoming Middlelands festival by C3 Presents.)

We’re a long way from Woodstock, baby.

More information about Day for Night tickets here.

*This year’s festival is at the Barbara Jordan Post Office at 401 Franklin Street, Houston, Texas 77201.