Arcade Fire's singer/songwriter Owen Pallett will curate and headline the nascent Maximum Black Festival Tour at the end of February. The festival gathers key players from the indie-rock and avant-metal scenes for three epic concerts: one in Vienna, one in London and one in Berlin.
Pallett will be performing as his one-man-solo project, Final Fantasy, and will be joined by Deerhoof, Dirty Projectors, Six Organs of Admittance, Stephen O'Malley & Alexander Tucker Duo, Frog Eyes, and Max Tundra.
Maximum Black Festival 2008 Dates:
28.02.2008 WIEN Arena 29.02.2008 LONDON The Forum 02.03.2008 BERLIN Postbahnhof
There is an interesting story behind this unique music entourage. You may recall that the Vienna Public Utility paid an ad agency to update their image and that agency thought the Utility would benefit from Final Fantasy's song, "This is the song of Win & Regine". The agency contacted Owen Pallett but he wasn't interested in commercial licensing of his music and thus denied the song's use. The ad agency made a very poor decision to hire a lame band to crank out an almost exact copy of the Final Fantasy song they originally desired. Well, it didn't take long for Owen to hear the production and retaliate. The festival website describes what happened next:
An impending law suit did not suit the interests of both Final Fantasy and the Viennese company, and so they both agreed to compromise: Final Fantasy, i.e. Owen Pallett and his team (Patrick Borjal & Susanne Herrndorf) offered to curate a festival to be financially and logistically supported by the Vienna Public Utility company. In return, the ‘cover’ of the Final Fantasy original may be used for their campaign so long as a reference to Owen’s work is credited.
So, you can thank bad business practices and a cunning music lover for making this epic event possible!
All further FAQ's are answered on the fest site:
http://www.maximumblackfestival.com
You can listen to tracks by each of the performing artists on the new Max Black myspace page:
http://www.myspace.com/maximumblackfestival
The Wiener Stadtwerke TV-Spot:
