The organizers of the inaugural Synth Fest MKE acknowledge that the festival’s name is a bit of a misnomer. “The idea behind it was all things synthesis, not necessarily just synthesizers,” explains Jim Schoenecker, a 20-year veteran of Milwaukee’s electronic and experimental music scenes. And while there will of course be plenty of synthesizers represented over the course of the festival’s two-day lineup, they’re far from the only instrument that artists can use to make synthetized sounds.
“Look at a guitar, for instance,” explains festival co-organizer Kenneth Sabbar, who performs as Dead Pawn. “A guitar gets contextualized in a certain way, and people usually associate it with rock bands, but then when I think about it, there are instruments that are made using metal guitar strings and pickups that are not guitars. By the time you process it with pedals and all sorts of other gear, you’re synthesizing a sound. So the festival isn’t going to be just guys with Moogs and modular gear. I play with looping cassette tapes, which almost isn’t an instrument at all; it’s a medium.”
Conceived as a way to showcase Milwaukee’s vast but sometimes disconnected electronic music scene, Synth Fest is a spiritual spin-off of sorts from Acme Records’ monthly experimental music series Audible Electricity, created by Schoenecker and He Can Jog producer Erik Schoster. Many of the festival’s more than two dozen acts have also been featured at the MELT experimental music series or the Milwaukee Noise Festival, but Synth Fest casts an even wider net than either of those events. With electronic music’s reach expanding rapidly, the organizers saw an opportunity to introduce general audiences to some of the hidden treasures of Milwaukee’s scene.
“Synthesizers right now, especially modular, are really hot,” says Schoenecker. “There’s just been this resurgence. So there’s a lot of people that are curious about it and more aware about it now that they see it more often, and that’s one audience we’re hoping to reach. So there will be plenty of people who are interested musicians. And we’re bringing out a lot of artists who I don’t see play often. There’s a lot of people who are doing stuff in their bedrooms but aren’t necessarily doing shows.”
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Among the acts scattered across the festival’s four bills—two shows a day at Acme Records and the Cactus Club—are seasoned mainstays of the local electronic scene, including Signaldrift, BTS.WRKNG and adoptahighway, as well as relative newcomers like LUXI, Liquid City Motors and rapper-producer Emmanuel Fade. Since multiple people had a hand in booking the lineup, many of the performers on the bill have never played together before, or in many cases have never even heard of each other.
“It’s cool that we could bring all of these little pockets together,” Schoenecker says.
Synth Fest MKE runs July 23 and 24 in Bay View. Each day features a showcase at Acme Records from 1-6 p.m. (with no cover, though donations are encouraged) and a Cactus Club showcase starting at 9 p.m., with a nightly cover of $7 or $12 for both nights. The complete lineup is below.
SATURDAY, JULY 23
Acme Records (1-6 p.m.)
Sample And Fold
August Traeger
Dead Pawn
Dan of Earth
Ruined Costume
Curtis Chip
Hot Science
Signaldrift
Cactus Club (9 p.m.-1 a.m.)
LUXI
Stumblesome
Exteriors
Adoptahighway
Jon Mueller + Jim Schoenecker
Black Lines, Din Sky
SUNDAY, JULY 24
Acme Records (1-6 p.m.)
Stray Voltage
Kendra Amalie
Olivia Valenza
Greg Surges
Pete Speer
Kevin Schlei
Apollo Vermouth
Randal Bravery + Emmanuel Fade
Forest Management
Cactus Club (9 p.m.-1 a.m.)
Nicholas Elert
LFTY
BTS.WRKNG
Liquid City Motors
Sam Armus
Thomas Wincek
