When Milwaukee’s electronic music scene learned that it had lost one of its most respected institutions earlier this year, the MELT music series, it didn’t grieve very much. As beloved and influential as that showcase was, there was a sense that it had to end eventually and something else would take its place sooner or later; now we have a better idea of what that something might be: This month, producer Tyler St Clair—a veteran of the MELT events who performs under the monikers Datarunner and Stagediver—will launch a new music series called CAUTION that could prove MELT’s most obvious successor.
Asked how CAUTION will try to distinguish itself from its predecessor, St Clair says that this series will be a little more accessible than MELT, which frequently explored some pretty discordant sounds. But really, he says, “there’s not a whole lot that separates it.” CAUTION will retain MELT’s focus on electronic artists who are, for one reason or the other, shut out of the Milwaukee music scene’s inner circle—the acts that are either too experimental for big bills or regular airplay, as well as the ones that have been, in St Clair’s estimation, unfairly overlooked. Further contributing to the sense that a mantle has been passed: MELT founder The Demix will play CAUTION’s first installment.
St Clair says he modeled the night around his own interests. “I don’t drink,” he says. “I don’t party. I’m definitely not part of the meat market. I don’t go to clubs, I don’t do these things that other people do, so it made sense, if I had the opportunity to create a night of music that would interest me personally, what would that look like?”
That’s how he landed on CAUTION’s unorthodox venue: Landmark Lanes, the cavernous, underground bowling alley on the East Side, which has never been known for live music. “The last thing I wanted to do is host the event in a bar,” St Clair says. “Bar shows are great, but for certain pockets of people like myself, they can be a little alienating, so I loved the idea of throwing this in a venue that isn’t necessarily strictly a bar—it’s a bowling alley. It just seemed cool. This venue has been around forever, and it draws a diverse crowd and has an equal gender balance. I was just taken with the idea of utilizing someplace that’s been around this entire time to do something new and different.”
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In addition to The Demix and St Clair’s Datarunner project, the inaugural CAUTION bill will feature Dashcam (a producer who has been turning heads with his widescreen remixes of Milwaukee acts like GGOOLLDD, Klassik and NO No Yeah Okay), hip-hop producer SammyJams, the noisy Chicago EDM producer CCDM and the dreamy electro-pop producer LUXI.
“LUXI I’m not terribly familiar with, but I enjoy her music,” St Clair says. “It’s a name I haven’t seen around much and I wondered why, because she’s good enough that I should be seeing her name more. So that seemed like a good reason to reach out to a stranger and ask if they wanted to perform.
“There are a lot of acts like that,” he continues, “artists making really great music that don’t seem to play live much. So I kind of see my job as poking them with a stick to get them out and performing.”
CAUTION’s first installment begins at 9 p.m. on Friday, March 25 at Landmark Lanes. Cover is $5. You can stream an online compilation for the series at radiograffiti.bandcamp.com, and below.
