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| | Bucolic Valley, an intimate one-day music festival focused on psychedelic rock.
The Mystery Lights will headline the festival, and
they’re joined on the preliminary lineup by Windows, Kid Bess and the Magic Ring, Gracie Gray, uncleshake, Pleasure Dome, and Düül Suns. Additional bands will be announced as they are added to the lineup.
The Mystery Lights story begins in 2004 in the small town of Salinas, California, when friends Michael Brandon and Luis Alfonso — whose shared fondness for groups like The MC5, Velvet Underground, Dead Moon, and The Fall (to name a few) — joined forces to craft their own brand of unhinged rock and roll. From there, they spent the better part of 10 years touring relentlessly before migrating to Queens, New York, in 2014. With a live show known for its visceral energy and relentless assault — leaving little to no stoppage between songs — they barreled through countless NYC haunts and DIY venues, quickly amassing a fervent local following. The buzz soon caught the attention of Daptone Records execs who were in the beginning stages of launching a new rock-centric imprint, Wick Records. Impressed by the group’s groove, endless supply of energy, and understanding of musical history, The Mystery Lights were quickly signed to Wick. Though a rock band at heart, the parallels to what Daptone Records had traditionally looked for in their soul artists was undeniable. | Buy Tickets |
| | Mdou Moctar is a prodigious Tuareg guitarist and songwriter. Mdou Moctar boldly reforges contemporary Saharan music and "rock music "by melding Eddie Van Halen pyrotechnics, full-blast noise and guitar shredding, field recordings, drum rhythms, poetic meditations on love, religion, women's rights, inequality, and Western Africa's exploitation at the hands of colonial powers to rip a new hole in the sky with the Afrique Victime album.
Mdou Moctar's home is Agadez, a desert village in rural Niger. Inspired by YouTube videos of Eddie Van Halen's six-string techniques and traditional Tuareg melodies, he mastered the guitar, which he himself built, and created his own burning style. A born charismatic, Mdou went on to tell his story as an aspiring artist by writing, producing & starring in the first Tuareg language film: a remake of Purple Rain called Akounak Tedalat Taha Tazoughai - which translates to "Rain The Color Of Blue With A Little Red In It", winning the approval of his family and his community. The word and the sound traveled across West Africa via mobile phone data cards, a popular form of local music distribution. Grueling DIY world tours and albums on the independent US label Sahel Sounds followed, including 2019's landmark Ilana: The Creator album that earned Mdou Moctar an ecstatic international audience. | Buy Tickets |