Lite + Brite: 30 Borderless Austin Events 3/22

Hello, what’s up, and welcome to the Lite + Brite newsletter.

We are back at our desks after an intense SXSW. Over the course of the week, Leila saw 40 bands, which is nothing, it’s garbage, it’s barely worth mentioning, because Brian saw 54. We’ve both made playlists of our favorite songs that we heard live at SXSW 2024: listen to Brian’s playlist here and listen to Leila’s playlist here. Did you catch any good music during the fest? Tell us about it in our Discord.

Now that SXSW is over, we’re back to our regular programming, starting with our long-prophesied subscriber meetup and YouTube party THIS SUNDAY at Bobo’s Snack Bar! It’s free and open to all, so please come and invite your friends. Over the 4+ years that we’ve been running this newsletter, we’ve had the great pleasure of meeting some of our subscribers. But there are still so many of you whom we haven’t met, and on Sunday we want to rectify that. Do you have suggestions for how to improve the newsletter? Do you want to tell us what happened when you attended an event we listed? Do you run events that we should know about? Do you want to connect with other Austinites who also like doing stuff? Sunday is your opportunity for all of that!

Is that not enough for you? Do you want to spend EVEN MORE time hanging out with us? Great, because we are also hosting No Lights No Lycra, our dance party in the dark, at West China Tea on Thursday.

Do you want to attend events NOT hosted by us? That’s cool, we’ve got those, too! This week you can eat a series of Hobbit meals, snuggle with pigs while “pig-friendly tunes” play around you, swim in the gutter while looking at the stars (it’s not literally a gutter; it’s Barton Springs), party in Hell with a live soundtrack, meditate with a beatboxing monk, or attend a schlocky film screening that I thought was about Al Gore but it absolutely is not. Scroll down for details on all this and more.

If you’re not already a subscriber to this newsletter and you want to be, click here. We do one newsletter a week, usually on Fridays, plus a bonus edition around the start of each month. If you enjoy this newsletter, please support us by contributing to our Patreon and by forwarding this email to your friends who enjoy things like listening to music and leaving the house sometimes.

Let’s do fun stuff!

—Leila + Brian
liteandbriteatx.com

OUR STUFF

Our subscriber meetup and audience-curated YouTube “film festival” is happening this Sunday at Bobo’s Snack Bar. Starting at 5:30, we’ll be hanging out with you and other Austinites who like doing fun stuff and leaving the house sometimes. At 6:30, we will begin showing your favorite YouTubes on the big screen. The whole event is free and open to all, plus there will be delicious local foods and drinks available for purchase.

Then No Lights No Lycra, our dance party in the dark, is on Thursday at West China Tea. Resident DJ Brian Blackout will be back on the decks, laying down his signature blend of indie, disco, rock, house, guilty pleasures, + more. Want to hear what NLNL tends to sound like? You can listen to a recording of the most recent edition—an all-vinyl set DJed by the fabulous PhilDoesIt—here. (By the way, there are no lights at No Lights No Lycra, so DJing with vinyl is extra-impressive. PhilDoesIt is not fooling around.)

No Humans Allowed was a great vehicle for post-SxSW listening. Brian did a special double length show with loads of new music from bands who played at the festival. You can listen to the show in the Kpiss archives here. NHA broadcasts live every Wednesday at 6pm CT on kpiss.fm.

What is No Lights No Lycra?
Austin’s twice-monthly, judgment-free, substance-free, high-impact dance thing in the dark. It’s a DJ night that’s not at the club, a workout that’s not at the gym, a personal meditation that’s anything but silent. It’s produced by us, your kindly L+B overlords, and usually one or the other of us is on the hook for DJ duties. Read more about us in the Austin Chronicle. You can listen the kind of music we play over on Brian’s Mixcloud.

EVENTS WE’RE EYEING

Friday 3/22

  • Zen Beatbox Monk’s Dance at Canopy
    Perform yoga to Buddhist chanting, beatboxing, + loops
  • Body Mechanics at 301 Chicon
    DJs happily blurring the lines between a dance party + a fetish party
  • Electric Feels at Empire
    Traveling 00s-centric indie dance party
  • A Gore-Met Feast at EastSide Theatre
    See some deliciously schlocky horror flicks on film
  • PowerPints at the Highball
    Make Clippy proud w/comedic presentations + pints of beer
  • Poolboy: Don’t Pick Up at the Museum of Human Achievement
    A submission-themed memoir turned interactive play
  • Hobbit Meal at the Tiny Minotaur
    Sample all 7 traditional Hobbit meals + keep an eye out for Elijah Wood
  • Latino Comedy Project at Hyde Park Theater
    Long-running sketch troupe celebrates 25 years w/classic skits
  • Poe: A Tale of Madness at the Long Center
    Edgar Allen Poe-themed horror ballet

Saturday 3/23

  • Art Salon Aesthetic Mystique at Curia Arcanum’s House of Curiosities
    “Fine art, music, magic, amazing feats, fortune telling, + spirits of all kinds”
  • Saltburn Rave at Cheer Up Charlie’s
    A great excuse to dance to indie + pop hits of the 00s
  • TEDxUTAustin at Hogg Memorial Auditorium
    Uniquely Austin + UT-centric version of the presentation event
  • Texas Roller Derby at the Buda Thunderdome
    Roller derbyists murderously crash their way through a banked track
  • Closing Day at the Austin Rodeo
    This ain’t your last rodeo (but it is the last one of the season)
  • Opening Hours at Sherwood Forest Zine Library
    Read from Sherwood Forest’s extensive library of zines
  • Poolboy: Don’t Pick Up at the Museum of Human Achievement
    A submission-themed memoir turned interactive play
  • Hobbit Meal at the Tiny Minotaur
    Sample all 7 traditional Hobbit meals + keep an eye out for Elijah Wood
  • Latino Comedy Project at Hyde Park Theater
    Long-running sketch troupe celebrates 25 years w/classic skits
  • Encuentro de Maíz at Nepantla
    Corn-centric storytelling, talks, + a documentary
  • Poe: A Tale of Madness at the Long Center
    Edgar Allen Poe-themed horror ballet
  • (weekly thru 4/21) Sherwood Forest Faire in McDade, TX
    Central Texas’ own renaissance faire w/medieval food, entertainment, + dress
  • (weekly thru 5/25) Doom Metal Goat Yoga at Jester King
    “We call out to the beasts of the land to come forth and JOIN US!”

Sunday 3/24

Monday 3/25

Tuesday 3/26

  • Tiny Talks at Austin School of Film
    Short-format “show + tell for adults” accompanied by slides
  • Games of the Month Meetup at the Museum of Human Achievement
    “It’s like a book club, but for games”
  • Bike Night at COTA
    Whiz around COTA’s raceway on your own bicycle

Wednesday 3/27

Thursday 3/28

No Humans Allowed 184
SxSW 2024

Last week was South by Southwest here in Austin, and hundreds of bands descended on the city. This week we played our favorites of the fest from the 50+ acts we saw, tons of new music by young bands from all over the world. We even allowed some humans who play music without synthesizers and drum machines into the mix at some point…

Stream SxSW 2024

Tracklist
Nabihah Iqbal – The World Couldn’t See Us
Sculpture Club – Cursed or Hexed
Vitesse X – Us Ephemeral
Faux Real – Rent Free
Tagua Tagua – Colors
Juanpalitoschinos – Una Vez Más
Le Couleur – À la Rencontre de Barbara ft. Standard Emmanual
Marie Madeleine – Swimming Pool
Fcukers – Mothers
Orion – Higher
Desire – Darkside
Public Circuit – Caustic Cross
Holy Wire – I Still Feel Alone All the Time
Psymon Spine – Boys
Discovery Zone – Pair a Dice
Sextile – Crash ft. Izzy Glaudini
DAIISTAR – Star Starter
Girl and Girl – Hello
HighSchool – Doesn’t Matter
The Belair Lip Bombs – Say My Name
Friedberg – Never Gonna Pay the Rent
La Sécurité – Hot Topic
Sinkane – How Sweet Is Your Love

No Humans Allowed is Brian Blackout’s award-winning, dodgy European news coverage receiving, weekly robots-themed radio show on internet station KPISS.fm. Machine vibes 4 machines. Songs for robots, androids, mandroids, cyborgs, AIs, cylons, skinjobs, roombas, wifi routers, smart devices, anything colored Bondi blue, and virtual assistants. Humans not required. Broadcasts live every Wednesday at 6pm CT on kpiss.fm, with over 150 episodes now streamable in the archives on topics like and Beach Simulations, Roomba dance parties, undersea adventures + Cyber Texas.

No Lights No Lycra ATX 164
w/DJ Phildoesit

Recorded live in the dark (on vinyl!) at West China Tea House on March 14, 2024.

Listen to No Lights No Lycra 164

PATREON THANKS

A huge thank-you to our Patreon subscribers Amy Hayes, Katie Green, Christina Jue, Colleen MB, Lilly Ettinger, Lena Long, Amalia Litsa, Alexander Freed, Spencer, Kristen Backor, Timon A., Kate Murray, and Amy Wilde. We’re deeply grateful for your support, which allows us to do things like “pay our Mailchimp fee” and “spend hours researching Austin events when technically we should be working.”

If you’d like to support us on Patreon and get access to exclusive member-only benefits, you may do so here.

SOCIALS

Recent weeks found us hitting SXSW hard and promoting our subscriber meetup and YouTube party at Bobo’s Snack Bar. Follow Lite + Brite on Instagram to keep up with our adventures. And come chat with us and the rest of the L+B community on our Discord server!

ABOUT US

How do we choose which events to feature?

Honestly, it’s pretty random. We might include anything in Austin that we, personally, would conceivably want to go to, generally excluding normal concerts, comedy shows, and movie showtimes because there are many other good resources for finding those. (We especially recommend Showlist for live music, The Darker Side of Austin for goth and metal stuff, and the 60+ Weirdest Things in Austin for exactly what it sounds like). This list is by no means exhaustive; it’s just stuff that caught our eye this week. If you have an event that you want us to consider including, send it over.

Who are we?

We are Leila + Brian. We make this newsletter. We do our own events, most prominently No Lights No Lycra (every second and fourth Thursday of the month). We once got called “local Austin couple” by KXAN. We do some other stuff here and there. We love going out to creative events in Austin, and we want you to join us. Visit us at liteandbriteatx.com, and support us on Patreon if you like what we do.

SEE YOU NEXT WEEK, CHAMPIONS

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