WHO: Insomniac, Soul’d Out Productions, Dead Nation & Ampersand Present STS9 (in “Sector 9″ form) Emancipator & SOJA
WHEN: Friday, April 27th @ 10 p.m.
WHERE: Blaine Kern’s Mardi Gras World
WHY: Fans of the band’s pre-Mac days and instrumental funk and jazz groove style shouldn’t miss this opportunity to see the Sector 9 revisiting their back catalog and layin’ it down old school like they did at the much buzzed-about 12/27/11 show to open this past New Year’s 5-night run.
TICKETS: $35 (BUY)
A huge day of music will just be getting started after Day 1 of the New Orleans Jazz & Heritage Festival wraps up with The Beach Boys, Steel Pulse and Bon Iver. On Friday evening, an extra special STS9 happening rolls in hot to the Big Easy, brought to you by the purveyors of all-things electronic Insomniac Events, Ampersand, Dead Nation and Soul’d Out Productions. The evening marks a speedy return to one of the band’s favorite cities for a special night of early-era “Sector 9″, at the River City Ballroom at Mardi Gras World on the waterfront.
In recent years, the live electronic jam powerhouse has made a habit of multi-night runs in NOLA at the House of Blues, including an impressive, old school 2-night run this past November that totally revitalized my once-flickering interest in one of my all-time favorite live acts. STS9 is celebrating the end of the Mayan calendar in a big way in 2012, with a series of special runs billed as the Great Cycle Spectacles that have already included stops in Denver and Chicago thus far and continues on in Oakland this weekend. This show promises to be sprawling, jarringly psychedelic and thoroughly adventurous, and even the most longtime, ardent fans should be able to expect hearing a song or two that hasn’t seen the live stage in years.
WHAT’S NEXT FOR STS9: To continue the banner year of destination tour stops and festivals, the band is set to hit the nearby Hangout Fest. Next, Summmer Tour kicks into gear with a one-night only exhibition of the Great Cycle Spectacles at Red Rocks before the return of their RE:Generation festival. Following RE:Gen there’ll be a trip up to Michigan for Electric Forest, a jaunt back West for High Sierra Music Festival and a wrap-up in Connecticut at Gathering of the Vibes. Fittingly, given the band’s interest in Mayan mysticism and culture, STS9 will celebrate the end of the Mayan calendar cycle with a lengthy run alongside The Disco Biscuits and Umphrey’s McGee that will culminate with a midnight set by STS9. Exhausting, if the world does in fact end in December, it appears that STS9 will have left it all on the table in 2012.