It is about that time where festival season is underway with festival lineups releasing left and right. Today, December 7th, Music Festival Levitation has released their extremely eclectic 2018 lineup. The lineup features the incendiary Ministry, The Brian Jonestown Massacre, Dan Deacon and Slowdive.

Ministry is an American metal band from Chicago, Illinois and was formed by Al Jourgensen in 1981. They originally went for a musical style of synth-pop, but by mid-1980s they had morphed into one of the forerunners and pioneers of industrial metal music in the United States. The band has had a large change to their lineup throughout the years with Jourgensen acting as the only original member as the vocalist, songwriter, musician, and producer. The band has gone through a large amount of members with the current performing lineup as Al Jourgensen, John Bechdel, Sin Quirin, Cesar Soto, Tony Campos, and Derek Abrams. In 2008 Ministry broke up after 27 years with Jourgensen saying that the band will never reunite for anything. However, in August of 2011, a reunion was announced with two more studio albums coming out in 2012 and 2013 respectively. They are expected for a new album release in 2018.

Dan Deacon, born in 1981, is an American composer and extremely unique electronic musician known for his interesting 20th century minimalism style as well as his strange performance style. Since 2003, Deacon has released eight different albums under a multitude of labels with his most recent titled Gliss Riffer. Check the announcement here.

Noah Lennox aka Panda Bear is an American electronic musician, composer, and a co-founder of electronic group extraordinaires Animal Colkective. Recently, Panda Bear announced a special 12″ vinyl titled A Day With The Homies and will be released in January of 2018.  This vinyl will be the first solo efforts of Panda Bear since his album Crosswords from 2015.

Slowdive, an English indie-rock band from Reading, England has recently released an album aftr a long 22-year hiatus. Released this oast May, Slowdive’s self-titled album has received worlwide praise for their colorful guitars and dreamy vocals and musicianship. They have also been touring in support of their self-titled album Slowdive and recently finished on November 17th.

For those who do not know about Levitation, it is an annual 3-day eclectic music festival in the downtown portion of Austin, Texas and began in 2008. Levitation was formerly known as Austin Psych Fest, however, in 2015, the name was changed to Levitation so as to honor Psych-rock godfathers The 13th Floor Elevators. Produced by The Reverberation Appreciation Society, made of up the band members of The Black Angels, Levitation has began to extend itself to other venues such as Levitation France in 2013 and Levitation Vancouver and Chicago in 2015. This is a festival you do not want to miss. Get tickets here. The Reverberation Appreciation Society also runs its own record label and has also produced Austin events such as SXSW, Le Guess Who? in the Netherlands, and NRML in Mexico City.

Photo credit Raymond Flotat