Hey kids; it’s time to rebel against the establishment and DO EXACTLY AS YOU’RE TOLD: Nova Scotia’s Obey Convention, a festival focusing on the best in emerging experimental music, has just announced its full lineup to its four days of programming.
Including plenty of acts from Canada, the second wave features the desert blues-influenced duo 75 Dollar Bill, the squelching treble and scream-punk of Guttersnipe, Toronto hip-hop duo Just John x Dom Dias, composer Mary Jane Leach, Vital White Mountain Apache violinist Laura Ortman, “Glaswegian dream-weaver” Cucina Povera, hip hop group Strange Froots, performance artist and vocalist Soeur Acéphale, and the Montreal-based goths Dregqueen. Holding it down are the sounds of kanun player Sanaz Nakhjavani, Sobey-nominated performance artist Bridget Moser, the gritty, distorted beats of France’s Slaylor Moon, “meditative wave producer” Nick Schofield, “queer swamp chameleon” Maskara, and Colombia’s Tamsaianka.
The slew of added artists magnifies the festival’s first wave roster, which confirmed Eartheater, DJ Haram, Kelly Moran (in her Canadian premiere), Tomoko Sauvage, Justice Yeldham, Mich Cota, Debby Friday, Korea Town Acid, The Brodie West Quintet, and Obey’s inaugural composer-in-residence Nicole Rampersaud.
All that is to say, there’s a TON going on, in every possible music genre (or anti-genre), designed to confront that safe and warm musical comfort zone you’ve been incubating in all winter.
And to boot, the festival is programmed to prevent FOMO: you can literally see everything it has to offer (Almost like there was some sort of secret hidden message threaded throughout to get us all to comply…) Plus, it’s free for anyone under 19 (…the younguns being the most susceptible to mind control after all). I mean, doesn’t all this constant defiance get a little, you know, dull?
OBEY kicks off May 30 and runs through June 2. So get to listening to that lineup, check out a sweet teaser trailer below, and grab your tickets before the rest of the experimental community complies.