BOOTS ON THE GROUND: Yeehaw, y'all. We're in Austin, TX this week for South By Southwest, and you'll be able to follow along via Homedrone and Twitter (@flagpolemusic and @gordonlamb). All you Athens bands making the trip out, please travel safely, and if you see us around, wave and say hey!

DECADE OF DECADENCE: Related to the above is the 10th annual Athens in Austin party happening at downtown venue The Side Bar Saturday, Mar. 19. It runs from 12–7 p.m. and will host 14 Athens and really-dang-close-to-Athens bands, including Cicada Rhythm, Muuy Biien, Mothers, Bambara, St. Pé, T. Hardy Morris & the Hardknocks, Tedo Stone, Pujol, New Madrid, Warehouse, Mail the Horse, Faux Ferocious, The Hernies and Khruangbin. This event is spearheaded and run by the Georgia Theatre and sponsored by other Athens businesses, including Flagpole. If you're in Austin this week, please come down and hang. For more information, see athensinaustin.com.

SPRING BEATS: Producer Matt Lahey keeps gaining ground with his new Bills Clinton project. The artist formerly known as Astroshaman has totally made the 90-degree turn from spaced-out vaporwave into fully-realized hip hop. He's just released a new collection of tracks titled Dubsack God. While owing more than a passing glance to '90s G-Funk style beats, especially on opening track “Lord Bills,” he's also incorporating a lot of electro glitch and dark beats à la Three 6 Mafia. I said previously that I was looking forward to what he was gonna do under this moniker, and it turns out that I was totally right. Grab a slice at astroshaman.bandcamp.com.

WE’RE NIGHTCLUBBING: This Friday and Saturday, Mar. 18 and 19, the Georgia Humanities Council and Art Rocks Athens will present New York video artists Pat Ivers and Emily Armstrong. Both made early names for themselves in the mid-to-late ’70s and early ’80s by documenting New York’s new-music scene via videotape, which at that time required much more lugging around of equipment than it does now. In addition to filming early shows by artists like Bad Brains, Dead Boys and The Cramps, they captured a 1980 show by Pylon at Danceteria. The two-day program is titled "The Scene and the Screen: the Athens, GA/NYC Connection", and the first part happens Friday at Ciné at 7:30 p.m., where programming will focus on highlights from the pair’s public access video show and the first ever public screening of the full Pylon gig. A panel discussion follows with the filmmakers and Pylon's Michael Lachowski, Vanessa Briscoe Hay and Curtis Crowe. More highlights will be screened at 1:30 p.m. Saturday on the second floor of the Special Collections Library, followed by a panel discussion with the filmmakers covering the process of taking these tapes out of their decades-long deep storage. Both events are free and open to the public.

WELCOME BACK: Dark Americana band Junker has returned with a new album titled Ghosts And Dirges. At a mere six tracks, an argument could be made that this is more of an EP, but Junker's material is so heavy and overwhelming that six tracks should be more than enough for most listeners. For most of the record, Junker soundtracks an emotional apocalypse via its signature pedal steel and guitar-driven tunes blanketed with songwriter Stephen Brooks' crying vocals. On the next-to-last song, “Hillcrest,” Brooks starts with an unaccompanied vocal, and it's like staring at a darkened house for a long time when suddenly the curtain is briefly pulled back. It's appropriate that this song is also the most sweetly rendered on the whole album. Instead of stomping, it waltzes. More than any other record this year, I wish this one had come with a lyric sheet. But on the other hand, Brooks' vocals mesh with the music such that it essentially becomes another instrument, and it all becomes one big envelope of grief where whatever's written on it take a backseat to what the listener has packed inside. This is yet another wonderful release by these guys. It was recorded at Full Moon Studios with engineer Jay Rodgers mostly last August, with bits and bobs added later. Settle in at junkerband.bandcamp.com.