Texas boys Best Fwends are back at SXSW this year, bringing their video game-centric melodies and hurried electronic downbeats to old fans and new ones. Call them out on their tongue-in-cheek approach to music making if you must, but these cats know exactly what they're doing, and manage to make three-dimensional songs that also know how to get down. Does Antony know how to get down? No, he really doesn't. Via email, Best Fwends Anthony and Dustin talk with us about their storied history, SXSW, and Daryl "Fucking" Hall....

Today's the day! This is it! Ya es el dia! Voila! Israel has now said that they might go into Gaza and reoccupy it. The Monkeywrench Gang is alive and well. Two moms in Boston got into a litigation-worthy fight at a Chuck E. Cheese. Study says, blocking TV/video game time helps kids slim down. Did you read that fishy-seeming article in the New York Times this weekend about the ex-gang-member living in Oregon?......

What’s the Deal: There’s one main, overwhelming reason why The Blow made it into this week’s Le Diamant, and that’s because of their song “Parenthesis.” It’s the kind of cute and quirky pop tune that made the songs off the Juno soundtrack so viral. The Blow is the devious and rascally spawn from the mind of musician, visual artist and performer Khaela Maricich. The other half of the creative team that is The Blow is (or was) Jona Bechtolt. According to the group’s MySpace, Bechtolt has left the band, most likely to further his singing and programming in his solo project, YACHT. The Blow have this whole middle school crush ‘Do you like me? Check yes, no or maybe’ thing going on that sinks its teeth in all the way to the gums with a swirling mixture of video game-style electronics and poppy folk. ...

ArtSpark 2008 applications are available through 3/31, and this year HBMG is awarding $15,000 in prizes to two winning creative teams. For the uninitiated, ArtSpark throws a "spark"—a piece of visual art or music—to a group of creative teams and tasks them with creating a new play or video game. If you're active in almost any creative field, check it out....

We understood that Cleveland, Ohio was known for rock music, but for subtly bouncy electronic art pop? We we dubious until we discovered that the midwestern mecca is the origin of Joe Williams, whose project White Williams will be stopping through our fair city tonight at Emo's for a show opened by Rings (New York) and Cry Blood Apache (Austin)....

The story begins in New York in the year 2011. This is John McCain's recession-riddled America, where gas has edged above 8 dollars a gallon, the best-selling video game is Infidel Massacre: Los Angeles, and, with 10,000 troops still in Iraq, the war is still going strong....

Production still courtesy of Troma Poultrygeist: Night of the Chicken Dead w/ Lloyd Kaufman Live! Friday, December 7thAlamo Drafthouse Lake Creek (17329 Research Blvd)(7:30pm, $10)[info] | [tickets]Over the course of the last thirty-three years, Lloyd Kaufman's Troma Entertainment has produced hundreds of films, attracted legions of devoted fans, and influenced the likes of Peter Jackson, Quentin Tarantino, Trey Parker, Eli Roth and Takashi Miike. In fact, by Kaufman's estimation, the studio now owns more than......

Photo by Will Pate on flickrInteractive + ScreenBurn The preliminary list of Interactive panels has been released, and includes topics like "The Great Debate: Is Web 2.0 Bulls#!t?", "The Porn Police: Know the Rules," and "The Suxorz: The Worst Ten Social Media Ad Campaigns of 2007." [Preliminary List] Additional, several panels for the gaming-centric ScreenBurn fest have been revealed. These include "The Future Virtual World Game Development: Rise of the Indies," "You Are Here: Gaming......

No worries if you haven't paid Helmet any mind since the mid-nineties: the band's potent blend of post-hardcore riffing and sarcastic, smart-stupid lyrics made Page Hamilton and Co. underground stars, but it also unwittingly helped usher in the IQ-lowering hordes of nu-metal that sent heavy music into a self-loathing free fall at the turn of the century. That does not, however, discount the fact that Helmet was-and is-one of the most formidable acts in hard......

Today's New York Times has an interesting article on Austin gaming mogul Richard Garriott, the person behind the Ultima franchise. The eccentric millionaire is a self-described space junkie, but whereas other enthusiasts would be content to collect "normal" space-related objects — "astronaut autographs, mission patches, ... 'flown' goods" and the like — Garriott has the means to think outside the, err, box. To wit: a giant, Soviet-made aluminum replica of Sputnik, which he purchased......

Best Fwends generate energetic bursts of post-punk mayhem complemented heavily by assorted electronic output as well as random keyboard and video game noises, among other things. The band’s sometimes annoying but often catchy everything but the kitchen sink sound can be found on their album, Alphabetically Arranged, available for purchase at pure groove. The band states the album "contains some of the best and worst songs we've made over the past four years" while their......

Austin police are on the lookout for a UT football player-turned-fugitive considered to be "armed and dangerous." An arrest warrant was issued yesterday for 17-year-old Andre Jones, a freshman defensive tackle from El Paso known by some as "Big Dre." Jones faces first-degree felony charges of aggravated robbery with a deadly weapon. Allegedly, Jones and his teammate, Robert Joseph, held up two victims at an East Austin student apartment residence last Friday. Joseph reportedly pointed......

After an incredibly (too) long hiatus, the lovable local kaleidoscopic synth pop band Belaire return with a brand new album titled Exploding, Impacting, despite the non-stop touring schedule of members Jason Chronis and Matt Simon (thanks to a little side project they have called Voxtrot) and twin sister (and singing partner) Christa Palazzolo now living in New York City. The album is a tour de force of Cari Palazzolo, who, with this release, has emerged......

Hello Lovers -- Vanity Fair (Inchworm): If it is possible to musically capture a lovesick, misunderstood poet wailing and moping about drunkenly in a scummy apartment overlooking a dark and lonely city, Austin’s Hello Lovers have done it. In fact, they have positioned their sound around the voice that embodies said misunderstood poet: that of J.C. King. If you can’t latch on to King’s Antony-esque vibrato, Colin Meloy-esque (of The Decemberists) nasality, or off-melody,......

The Mohawk residency concert series continues tonight with Treewave, who we hear will be joined by special guest Bill Baird. Treewave, as you probably know, are a Dallas-based band that practice shoe-gazingly superb songs that utilizes otherwise obsolete '70s and '80s video game gear. They are truly kickin' it 8bit style. The songs are created with really gritty assembly code, and is made possible by Commodore 64s, an old PC FM sound card (OPL3),......

Today, Governor Rick Perry officially recognized that when it comes to filmmaking, cash does indeed rule everything around us. After months of determined effort from the Texas Motion Picture Alliance, the Texas Film Commission, Rep. Dawnna Dukes and Sen. Bob Duell, Perry signed the dotted line on House Bill 1634, freeing up some $20 million in incentives to lure production crews--and the myriad jobs they generate--to the Lone Star State. The gaming industry also scores......

HBMG Foundation is still inviting folks to apply for the 2007 ArtSpark Festival, a twelve-week-long creative festival and competition that pits teams of theatre junkies, video game developers, and visual artists against one another to create awesome new works. At orientation, each team is given a "spark," an object which serves as the catalyst and inspiration to jumpstart the team's creative process. If you'd like to apply but can't find a team to join,......

Tonight, Music Mondays, AICN and the Austin Museum of Digital Art present 8 Bit, a documentary look at the cultural overlap between video games, art and music. Through interviews with digital artists (most notably Cory Arcangel, best known for his artistic Nintendo cartridge modifications) and heaps of live performance footage, the film explores the ever-increasing influence of video games on contemporary culture, from digital art to machinima to game-influenced music. And while this might seem......

The Austin Museum of Digital Art (AMODA) returns to The Mohawk tonight to host Digital Showcase 40. We'll let them tell you about tonight's show: The headliner for this month's Digital Showcase is DAT Politics from France. Over the last six years, this trio has released six albums packed with distorted bleeps, 8-bit video game melodies, cute pet recordings, and other sonic oddities. Their latest album, ‘Wow Twist’, was recently released on Chicks On Speed......

Violinist Charles Yang. Photo by Eric Uhlir Three weeks ago, Austin's newest arts organization, strataTX, launched with a successful kickoff gala at the Design Center of Austin. The latest giving group of the Texas Cultural Trust, strataTX brings together enthusiastic young professionals of all industries and backgrounds to help sustain and expand the Lone Star State's arts community. StrataTX Launch Party Attendees. Photo by Eric Uhlir Amidst heavy fanfare, TCT Deputy Director Jennifer Wijangco......

The fourth annual Austin Game Conference kicked off this morning. Right about now, thousands of gaming industry developers are probably sitting through opening remarks by Game Initiative conference director Tonda Bunge, Mayor Wynn, and Blizzard Entertainment's Rob Pardo -- the guy who brought computer geeks around the world such escapist hits as StarCraft and Warcraft III. Running through Friday, AGC includes an exhausting schedule of programming, with seminars focused on topics such as "The Joy......

...the 2006 ArtSpark Festival Let's hop in our magical Austinist Time Machine and go back 12 weeks. (Cue flashback music.) You're sitting in an "apricot flower colored" conference room. (Does that mean apricot colored...or something else?) You've just had a fun evening of "food and games." Someone hands you an envelope that contains the following "sparks": Mars, Nu Wave music, and internet dating, with topical support materials including cartoons, guitar tabs, articles, lyrics, and......

Slim pickin's today, friends. You can either choose a movie starring Oscar winners/nominees (which of course doesn't guarantee anything), or you can go with movies that cater to the lowest common denominator. Which is apparently pretty damn low these days. *Inside Man Denzel Washington, Clive Owen, Jodie Foster. Kudos, Spike Lee, for making a movie with one fine-lookin’ cast. (*Ed. Note: We saw a sneak preview of this movie and really enjoyed the nuances......

Hurrah, it’s Friday! There’s plenty of stuff going on around town this weekend, but perhaps you can find the time to slip into a cool, dark theatre and enjoy one of this week’s new movie releases. *The New World Another take on the story of Pocahontas, this time by director Terrence Malick. Colin Farrell, Christopher Plummer, and our future husband, Christian Bale, star in a film certain to at least be more historically authentic......

In conjunction with the Interative portion of SXSW this year, the festival coordinators will also be debuting the "ScreenBurn Beta Festival," billed as "the place to get your hands on upcoming video game releases, hear from industry insiders and indie developers on the edge, and see the future of game development firsthand." The combination trade show and expo will be held at the Austin Convention Center on Saturday, March 11th, and will feature E3-like......

Austinite Charlie Gough went from a UT undergrad pursuing a computer science degree to Time’s 100 Most Influential People list, all without a diploma. Bungie game studio (which later was bought out by Microsoft) scooped up the one of three creators of Halo back in 1988. The video game was pretty much responsible for making the Xbox a necessity for gamers. Halo 2 isn’t doing bad either, with Microsoft reporting selling $125 worth of games......