Man or Astro Man? play Neumos tomorrow night with Audacity and Atomic Bride. Tickets are still available here!

• MAN OR ASTRO-MAN?: A futuristic surf-rock band from outer space.

Your intergalactic sonic wave forms are often documented by one Steve Albini. Is Steve Albini human?

Well, what a lot of people don't know is that Steve Albini is actually the inspiration for The Six Million Dollar Man. Last-minute studio changes resulted in the character having "bionic" implants as opposed to the "microphonic" implants Albini employs. Execs felt the world of studio recording was perhaps not as exciting as that of crime-fighting and espionage, so Albini's character was shelved. They then changed Steve's last name to Austin, and Albini became the Pete Best of electrical implants.

How have the years of hibernation affected your ability to manipulate your instruments?

It didn't affect us as much as it affected our instruments. Those things were dusty.

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That cute Azerbaijani mime does the best "trapped in a glass box" act that I've ever seen.

• PHILIP JAMIESON
• MATT BAYLES: Seven years ago, he left Minus the Bear to focus on making records.

When you think of mixing and producing, what's the first thing that comes to mind?

At its most basic, mixing is the balancing of frequencies, levels, and panning to get things to even out. After you get the tech stuff out of the way, you have to concentrate on what's meant to be the musical hook at any given time—a guitar nuance, a vocal inflection, a drum fill—and make it pop. Production is the choices you make to create those moments during recording. Getting the vocal take, the vocal sound, arranging the song so that there are those little things to listen for on the second listen, or a year later, or five years later.

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• Kelly O
• Daniel Enders, a Satan Donkey, and Austin Hund.

MTNS play the Black Lodge TONIGHT with Black Pus and the Numbs!

For their big Debacle Fest matinee performance at the Highline on May 4, Seattle duo MTNS are barefoot and wearing silk slips like it's no big deal. Slender Austin Hund ignites a bass dirge that ripples pant legs. Burly Daniel Enders coaxes crackles from a light theremin, then grabs his drumsticks and stands on his stool in order to beat on the venue's ceiling pipes. Eventually he sits down at his kit and attacks it with feral grace, his face distorted into a demonic grimace.

MTNS then launch into a wild, methodical growl and stomp. The twosome's portentous noise rock unexpectedly accelerates with mad energy, revealing roots in speed metal and no-wave. Enders drops a stick twice in 10 seconds, but no matter. The apocalyptic tone's been established.

As the set progresses, Hund makes his bass corkscrew and spasm in strange contortions and squeal like a pig (see: Deliverance), with a predilection for ratcheting up the tension to infernal degrees. But MTNS are about more than just speed and power. Their last song of the set—and the finale of their excellent new album, All Songs Are Spells—"Hut on a High Peak," shows that they're capable of writing a moving, majestic melody. Marked by an ascending recorder motif, it's one of the best songs by a Seattle band this year.

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Jim James plays the Neptune Theater tomorrow, May 15th. Tickets are still available here.

• MEATCLIFF: Seattle’s wisest corgi.

Where did you learn to sing like you're yodeling in a mine shaft?

My grandfather was a great coal miner in Betsy Layne, Kentucky. On his one day off, he liked to go there to assert his dominance over the miners, and sometimes he'd bring me.

Do you have any yodeling stories?

No, not really. I guess there was one occasion where my grandfather yodeled loud enough to startle a group of wolves away from some friends' sheep, but really it wasn't that exciting.

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Radiohead
Kid A
(Capitol)

I have a relationship to Radiohead that consists mainly of confusion and fear. I've heard of them, and I even went out and bought Pablo Honey when I was a teenager. I just didn't like it, and that was it. Then they became the Jesus of music and the world shitted itself every time they took another step, and it freaked me out. I never followed up—I used to avoid music that I thought I'd be embarrassed if I didn't understand. (I'm curing that impulse weekly now.)

When we started this column, I just assumed someone would eventually assign me Radiohead. Right?! But so far the contents have tended more toward old-school music learnin' and haven't caught up with the hip kids of the new millennium.

So I asked for it. Kid A was decreed, and I went home with determination (and some trepidation). It was a mostly silent sit-down couch listen; no running errands with headphones, no sorting laundry, no leaving the room for a minute. I listened to it like I was watching a movie, or waiting to be saved.

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Laura Stevenson plays the Sunset Tavern tomorrow night with Field Mouse and Seapony! Tickets are still available here.

Elsewhere on Wheel, Stevenson continues the evolution from acoustic folk songs to more explosive anthems with injections of horns and piano—new layers reveal themselves with every listen. I chatted with Stevenson while her band made the long trip from Houston to El Paso.

You used to be billed as Laura Stevenson and the Cans. I was going to ask you where the Cans went, but then I read your interview with Larry Livermore, where you pointed out one of the reasons you dropped it was because people kept making boob jokes.

That was the thing that annoyed me from the get-go, but I was like, "I'm going to try to overcome this."

Did you see Grimes's recent blog post about the things that she's no longer going to put up with as a female musician? She doesn't want to be infantilized; she's tired of reviews calling her a waif or a fairy... all these cute words. I feel like it's something that isn't talked about much in the music industry. Does it ever still feel like it's a boys' club out there?

Definitely. Especially the infantilizing thing. It's so ridiculous, because no matter what I do, my voice is called "cute." Even if I'm saying something hideous and sounding as ugly as I can, I'm still called cute. I had a party at my apartment, and this young couple said to me, "We listened to your music! It's really cute." They were guests in my home, so I couldn't be like, "Get the fuck out," they were my roommate's friends, but how shitty! Your life's work is fucking cute? Would you say that to Beethoven? Like, "Real cute sonata, Beethoven." It makes you feel small, and you shouldn't have to feel that way, especially if you're an adult human being who's making something honest.

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One more after the jump...

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Debacle Fest starts tonight and goes through Sunday. See the full schedule at debaclefest.com and see Dave Segal's picks here!

• DOUG COOMBES
• MOON POOL & DEAD BAND: This festival is going to be a gas.

Did you approach the curation of Debacle differently from previous years? It seems like there's more emphasis on dance music (albeit very strange dance music), judging by Sunday's bill, which reflects the influence of your MOTOR night.

I may have allowed myself to dream a little bigger and go harder for certain artists this year. Overall, the approach was the same as ever. These are artists that I enjoy and would love to see live. That's my only litmus test. I write down a huge list of people I would love to have, and I send out e-mails or ask friends to make connections, and I go from there. As always, what I set out to book and what the final lineup becomes are very divergent, but it's definitely more interesting than anything I could have come up with in a vacuum.

MOTOR is new to Debacle Fest this year. I wanted to go big with a whole night being a showcase of the local MOTOR crew, along with national-level artists that fit in to the vision of what MOTOR can be. I think that night is going to be phenomenal. Just Hieroglyphic Being alone is a huge thing, but I think it will be a historically good night—Moon Pool, Prostitutes, Strategy, GOODWIN, etc. You couldn't ask for a better lineup of mutant-dance heavies.

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Originally published at 10:30 pm last night, but moved up because LOOK! The Breeders! Superchunk! The Zombies! OH MY!

Tonight Bumbershoot organizers have announced their 2013 line-up and I think it looks pretty great. Confirmed musical acts include Death Cab for Cutie (playing Transatlanticism in its entirety), Heart, fun., BASSNECTAR, Kendrick Lamar, the Breeders, Superchunk, MGMT, Tegan and Sara, Crystal Castles, Allen Stone, and many more.

THE BREEDERS! SUPERCHUNK! HOORAY!

This year there will also be a new, all-ages EDM stage that'll open at 7 pm each night—the line-up for that will be announced in the near future.

Here's the complete list, broken down by day:

Saturday, August 31

Heart, Kendrick Lamar, Crystal Castles, Gary Numan, Jason Bonham's Led Zeppelin Experience, Maceo Parker, !!!, Icona Pop, Joey Bada$$, Washed Out, Charles Bradley and His Extraordinaires, Thao + the Get Down Stay Down, Robert Glasper Experiment, Watsky, ZZ Ward, Diamon Rings, the Physics, Sallie Ford and the Sound Outside, Lake Street Drive, Kris Orlowski, Cookie Monsta, Nacho Picasso, Ernie Watts with New Stories, Grynch, Gus + Scout, Davidson Hart Kingsbury, Total Experience Gospel Choir, Hyperfunk, the Flavr Blue, Sean Majors, Dave B, Human Spirit, Matt Jorgensen +451, Down North, Darrius

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Voice your support for the Seattle Drum School by contacting the Department of Planning and Development at 684-8600. Seattle Drum School also recommends you e-mail Councilman Nick Licata at Nick.Licata@seattle.gov.

• TRENT MOORMAN
• Kristy and Steve Smith

DEAR MAYOR MCGINN: Seattle Drum School should be flourishing, not on the verge of being shut down. Mr. Mayor, we cannot let places like Seattle Drum School perish. It's a great, positive place for kids, employing good people. We need music. We need music teachers. We need music taught. Our city and its government should be helping places like this, not threatening them.

Seattle Drum School founder Steve Smith spoke.

What's the latest on the retrofit/sprinkler issue?

A couple of weeks ago, I spoke with an assistant Seattle attorney who handles land-use issues. She was very kind and said she was going to contact her client at the Department of Planning and Development (DPD) to see if there was a way to bring us into compliance without resorting to a lawsuit. So far, I haven't heard back.

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From the archives of bizarrely questionable songs.

• During Seth Krimsky's world premiere, Love Song, Friday night at Benaroya Hall.

What are these people doing? Read all about it and see some mad-puppet Cabaret Voltaire, too, over on Line Out.

• Kelly O
• Where the wild things are.

There's a hole in the earth where the Funhouse used to be, and Healthy Times Fun Club is now a hair and waxing salon. Queen Anne's Easy Street Records is being replaced by a shiny new Chase Bank, and five years ago the Bellevue real estate company Murray Franklyn bulldozed a strip of iconic bars on Pine for condos and then left it as a parking lot for two years. And now, just a few blocks downhill, Bauhaus and other independent businesses are getting sold up the same river. Rent is rising, people are getting pushed out of the center of the city, and with water on either side, the development refugees can go either north or southx. If Capitol Hill isn't in the picture and you're looking twice at the rest of the map, these days the University District isn't looking half bad.

After years of gathering momentum, and to the surprise of many, the renaissance of the University District has arrived. The community of musicians and organizers spidering out from Roosevelt Way was created by and for the people who couldn't find a space for themselves anywhere else. It's for the part-time day-jobbers and young urban unprofessionals who don't have $15 for a show, who never take cabs, who maybe aren't 21, or who just want to play music for each other without red tape. There are more shows than ever happening in the U-District, and they're cheap or free, all ages, and totally DIY.

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• Photo by Pete Checchia
• END OF DAYS This is the final lineup of the Tokyo String Quartet, which began in 1969. They performed their last concert in Seattle one week ago today.

Most students who have studied philosophy come across Theseus’s paradox. It involves a ship that is slowly replaced piece by piece as its parts weather away. The question then is whether or not the ship, ultimately composed entirely of new materials, is the same ship at all. The members of the Tokyo Quartet, which played its last ever Seattle performance a week ago today, were recently faced with a similar conundrum.

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Dear SLOG: if I were to talk to ICP—the Insane Clown Posse, Kings of all juggalos—on the telephone tomorrow, what should I ask them? Maybe something about magnets?

Make of it what you will, Slog. (I'm also in love "Sigourney Weaver" from Grant's previous album.)

Amanda Palmer doesn't impress me. She never has. And while I've never bought into her exhaustingly whimsical pro-artist nonsense that's actually really self-serving and obnoxious, I've also never felt the need to physically recoil at anything she's done. Until now. Until reading her "A Poem of Dzhokhar," where she writes:

you don’t know how many vietnamese soft rolls to order.

you don’t know how convinced your parents were that having children would be, absolutely, without question, the correct thing to do.

you don’t know how precious your iphone battery time was until you’re hiding in the bottom of the boat.

you don’t know how to get away from your fucking parents.

you don’t know how it’s possible to feel total compassion in one moment and total disconnection in the next moment.

you don’t know how things could change so incredibly fast.

you don’t know how to make something, but the instructions are on the internet.

You can read the whole thing here. But, be warned—if you don't like it (and many people don't) that's not Palmer's fault. That's your own inability to see what the poem is really about. And her response to that criticism is what makes it all the more awful:

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