On a completely different note, let’s consider Polish psychedelic noise rockers Trupa Trupa. SXSW attendees tend to find out what locals have long since known – 6th Street is an utter mess.

It’s a beautiful, boisterous mess but a mess all the same. During the festival, there are times where the street is just a cacophonous clutter, barely walkable. There are moments, however, of relative peace – often at the edges – where you can witness a holiness to the absurdity. This is where I stumbled upon Trupa Trupa. At times a frantic thrash of cascading noise, at others, the soft echoing coo of desperate longing, listening to Trupa Trupa while the masses ebbed and flowed before me was a genuinely moving experience. The raw emotionality, unfiltered and burgeoning on incoherency yet balanced by a poeticism that shoots straight through the static, Trupa Trupa truly left me speechless there in the streets, a perfect match for the mayhem around them.

Benjamin Griffin, www.poptheology.com