straight out of.

"zara, you've changed..."

Do you remember being fourteen? I remember being fourteen, and being able to, quite proudly, identify in a crowd who my friends would be by the way they dressed. This sounds awful, but it's true. The criteria for this initial "selection" has evolved over the years. My days as a Camden pseudo punk (school uniform carefully tucked away in my rucksack) were fun, dense and characterised by people who were covered in patches, leather, studs, tattoos and for that brief awful moment, trucker caps. With these people I associated all the independent thoughts I so admired in the music I was listening to. Looking back, I evidently hung around with a lot of very stoned people, who at the time seemed very deep. Punk was a new concept for me and I admired everyone involved. I then moved along to be surrounded by the "indie kid". You know, the Converse wearing, collegiate looking, bumbling, bookish shy types so characterised by Seth Cohen of the O.C. For a long time afterwards if I was to see a young woman or man strolling along with such apparel I'd deem him or her interesting enough to talk to. To place myself in this melee, I attended a shambolic, fairly odd, public school where the girls regularly came in to the common room at various hours of the morning sporting £400+ hair extensions, fake tanned to the max, logo-ed handbags, Tiffanys jewelery gifted to them by paramours and bejeweled Jimmy Choo heels. (You must note this was when I was sixteen and uniform was no longer required). To this day I still characterise those who dress and appear in this manner vapid, vacant and dull. When I was between fourteen and sixteen I lived in band t-shirts, black jeans and Converse. I realise that it is awful to pass judgement on anyones character by how they appear, but I truly believed the way in which you chose to express yourself (thanks Dre) physically said a great deal about ones personality and interests. By this I mean to me Ugg boots equal mindless heathens, Doc Martens equal intimidating girls with death stares and high heels equal the masochistic/exhibitionist types. It's likely your interpretations derived from these pieces of footwear are entirely different, and this is where the social divide begins. Now, being older I'm very much aware stereotyping of this kind minimizes the benefit a wide variety of friends can have and what you stand to learn, not just about music, but about culture (though Ugg boots have no place in ANY culture). 

These days I have friends who dress themselves in a manner of ways- skinny jeans, skirts, trousers hung low, cords, whatever really, but if I'm being honest I still have a lot of characteristics I associate with certain ways people appear. Of course now, unlike when I was younger, fashion is much more in tune with subculture and buying into a Topman "indie look " won't buy you good taste in bands, nor will a New Era cap make you king of hardcore knowledge, the same way a pair of Dunks won't make you a real fan of hip hop. Due to the homogenisation of the ways in which various subcultures dress and in turn are being sold on as a "look" or "lifestyle" to consumers, in many ways we have begun alleviating our judgements associated with the items of clothing and the homogenisation in turn infers the falsehoods of the masses upon the subcultures themselves. Working both ways, the lines begin to get blurry and this takes away from subcultures, but also lays foundation for originality to appear in the cracks and forces people to move beyond "a look" in selecting their company, as "a look" no longer says as much about ones taste, or so it would seem.

I admittedly quite badly prejudge bands on how they look a lot of the time. Beards? Great. Skinny jeans on boys? Hmmm. Paisley? No. Bling? Hilarious! Grills? Ick. Do-rags? Gross.

Written down this comes across as very blunt, harsh and quite shallow, but the vast majority of people do pre-judge those they are faced with by the way they appear. When sifting through the vaguely more "unknown" acts of SXSW I tried to put aside my visual blockers, my judgements , and came out with some pretty decent results. So agree, disagree, debate, or no debate, I digress, and go on in an attempt to not bandy around genres and only describe the music...

Firstly Perseph One, who is a woman. She is a woman who reminds me a little bit of Lauryn Hill. If she decided to make a non-crazy comeback with a Santogold remix. I was told she tore it up at SX and sources say she is IT this year. Pay her a visit here.

Next, the awfully monikered Mr Lif who apparently I've been missing out on for oh about NINE releases? Where have I been? Why has no one shared the wealth? He rhymes with fairly intelligent lyrics, but as with most music such as this the samples make it for me. He'll certainly make you sway and nod your head, I'm feeling it.

Champagne, Champagne rise from Seattle and are very "now". Now meaning comparable to people like The Teenagers, Kitsune, La Roux, etc. Except they're pretty hilarious and good. Listen to the lyrics, at one point he mocks the "emotastic" and then goes on to sing an ode to Molly Ringwald. I laughed so hard my guts hurt. Beat heavy, lyrically awesome, GO now.

Awkquarius make me think of those hilarious porn channels that appear on Sky TV after midnight with those late night call shows where people act out their fantasies with some kitschy poorly acted brilliance. They also (with tongue firmly in cheek) evoke The Fresh Prince of Belair. This is so 90's it hurts, but man do you need to hear it.

What attracted me to the Morning Benders were their bedroom covers (hello Cardigans!). I'm a sucker for a good cover song and doing them in such a sweet offbeat manner does nothing but make me smile more. Their original music is very sunny, fans of Someone Still Loves You Boris Yeltsin should be excited, others who might enjoy may be currently revelling in some sort of hazy day. For those with weather wanderlust have a listen, they'll take you there.

The wiley We Were Lovers are disgustingly cute and very, very girly. SO sugary I almost want to put them among icing in my list of favourite things. After a while though I'm sure my teeth will be set on edge and I'll feel a little sick. However, until then I'll pretend I'm in the Princess Diaries and sing along to lighthearted tunes such as 'Birds Of A Feather' and feel totally pleased to be present in their musical fairytale.

Les Handclaps put us back in the 80's, but in Europe. In a trashy club. The bands name does not lie- they are pretty French (French Canadian), and do use a whole lot of hand claps, but somehow this combination works for them. They also have songs about the most stupid and ridiculous things. Such as how Cacti are delicious fruit. No, really...

The Lovely Feathers exist somewhere between Foals and the Caesars. They coast the perimeter of fine and great with some pretty promising mp3s circling the web. Every time I listen to them I begin to dig them a bit more and with a little more production effort and money they could quite easily be great. Watch this space? Yeah, they'll probably be on an Itunes advert soon.

Night Control create gorgeous sounds that Panda Bear would be jealous of. Ambient, a little spacey, it's good earth cafe music. Kids who've cruised beyond Sublime and past Animal Collective may enjoy this a lot. That said, I appreciate both Sublime and Animal Collective a great deal and fully endorse them, so anything goes. A band for all!

Everyone raves about Peasant. I don't really get the big deal, it seems to me like pretty standard singer with a guitar fare. Check it out with your own self loathing/wallowing discretion by clicking on his name.

Papercuts are pretty awesome. Mellow, elegant,  creative, bundles of pain and joy. They contrast well with the certainly more grassroots Donnovan Quinn and the 13th month, close friends of the aforementioned. Enjoying both creates a lovely mixture of musical textures to fill the next few moments of your life.

Thus ends part one of the SXSW summary by the absentee.

On top of all this new music stuff I highly recommend the new Silversun Pickups record for Smashing Pumpkin fans, the new Metric album for EH fans and the new Grizzly Bear album

for all the cool kids. They are all worth actually paying money for and not just stealing off of the Internet, and that's kind of a big deal.

Love to LGBK for the tip offs, more soon to conclude the SX roundup in the week.