Hopscotch Itinerary: Thursday, Sept. 5

This year's festival has a lot to offer for fans of all types of music. While diversity has always been a staple for Hopscotch lineups, this year's installment boasts such an interesting collection of bands that any festival goer could pop into any given venue and find something worth staying for. While this year has also been plagued with cancellations, the festival has done a remarkable job at maintaining high caliber replacements to make for an incredible weekend of music. While my festival schedule is still looking remarkably hectic for Friday night, Thursday will serve as an awesome, generally stress free opening night for the festival.

The day's festivities naturally kick off with day parties, which I'll be hopping back and forth from. Thursday's standout is most definitely the Rock & Roll Pizza Party at Slim's (mostly because you can't go wrong with free pizza, especially from Mellow Mushroom) which will host acts like Naked Gods and Lonnie Walker. But for a good chunk of the afternoon I'll be DJing at Wristband City as a part of WKNC's Remote Broadcasting. However, Thursday's daytime events also include some other awesome artists like The Brand New Life at Art of Cool's party at The Pour House and DiggUp Tapes Kings/Neptunes Party that highlights some of the label's finest artists alongside some of the state's standout acts that don't frequent the Triangle (I'm looking at you Alligator Indian).

But Thursday starts getting awesome quickly, as the night's marathon of a show schedule begins at 8:30 with Body Games at The Pour House. It'd be easy for fans of electronic music to just post-up at The Pour House, because it's filled with astoundingly talented artists all night, but those of us that want a bit more variety out of our Hopscotch experience will resort to venue hopping. Body Games is an incredibly promising new act from Carrboro with Lake Inferior's Dax Beaton behind the wheel. These electro-leaning pop tunes are an excellent way to kick off a night filled with energetic acts like this.

From Body Games I'll move along to Ama Divers at The Hive, a venue that I'll be spending an absurd amount of time at this year. Ama Divers is the new project from Filthybird's Brian Haran and Renee Mendoza-Haran, but it's far from what one would imagine from the two. Along with Chris Girard, these two weave gorgeous ambient tones with soaring vocals from Renee to make for a hypnotizing brand of music. If their live presence is anything like Filthybird's was then I expect to be entirely wrapped up in this show, but hopefully I won't lose track of time because I'll be sprinting over to Memorial Auditorium to see Sylvan Esso afterward.

I've made no attempts at hiding my love for Sylvan Esso, they're one of the most exciting acts I've seen in a long time. When I first heard "Hey Mami" I had my Audio-Technica's placed firmly around my ears and as soon as the fuzz-filled bass line dropped I was enamored. The combination of Nick Sanborn's booming hip-hop stylings with Amelia Meath's entrancing vocals produces beautiful results. Memorial is a fitting place to see this grandiose act for the first time, and I'm practically giddy waiting for the moment that these two take the stage. However, I won't be catching their entire set because I'm equally transfixed by Lapalux at The Pour House. Lapalux is signed to Flying Lotus' Brainfeeder label, and anyone who knows me is aware of how obsessed I am with FlyLo. Lapalux falls into similar territory, he produces heady beats that are filled with shuffling percussion and R&B styled vocals, making for a soulful experience that will be hard to turn away from. In previous years The Pour House has swiftly devolved into an all-out dance party, I'd expect much of the same once Lapalux starts blasting the sensual banger "Guuurl." It's going to be...turnt up as the kids are saying.

After Lapalux I'll make my way over to The Lincoln Theatre to post up for Kurt Vile and The Violators. Marnie Stern takes the stage before Vile and she'll serve as an excellent transition for the evening. While most of my night is filled with expansive electronic based music, Stern will bring in some good ol' guitar-based tunes to ease my way into the phenomenal Kurt Vile. I've admittedly not delved into Vile as much as I should have at this point, but sometimes that's the best way to go into live shows. I've most certainly got high expectations for the night's closer, but it's nice going in relatively blind to the man's talents.