Austin is known for its uniqueness, but despite the gab that surrounds the lively city, strip it down to its roots, it is just a normal place. A normal place that constantly features brilliant musicians at unassuming bars, sells Lonestar for $1.00, makes delicious salt lick BBQ, brings you SXSW and holds a festival once a year under the moniker “Psych Fest.”

Yes, the psychedelic train has arrived (some question if it ever really left) and it has plopped itself down 5 miles from Austin’s downtown on Carson Creek Ranch – a scenic 58 acre ranch that sits on the banks of the Colorado River. Each year Psych Fest changes locations to remote spots strung throughout Austin. It is in this 6^th annual festival that the three-days of music has become a complete outdoor festival. With three stages, over 20 acts per day, acres to roam and relish in, Psych Fest is clearly becoming a favorite to both Austinites and travelers alike.

Friday afternoon kicked off what was an impressively stacked afternoon of vibrant, hallucinogenic and multicolored rays of musicianship. Canadian quartet Besnard Lakes took to Psych Fest’s largest stage the Reverberation Stage to an expanding crowd. The atmospheric sensibilities radiating from stage to ground were overwhelming – Jace Lasek, Olga Goreas, Kevin Lanig and Richard White are composers. Together they have demanded audiences absorb syncopated riffs, languish in melodic movement and devour the death star soundscapes of their 2013 release Until in Excess, Imperceptible UFO. Every track build up in Besnard Lakes is one of epic multitude. It was clear we were hearing music, but not as we’ve originally known it. Conscious and ethereal, the soundscape of Besnard Lakes transported the watching earthlings with gusty ventilation.

At 6:00 Vietnam took over the Elevation Amphitheatre. Immediately this Brooklyn based fixture of the ‘00s who went silent five years ago and reactivated in 2012 under the same title as a six-piece brought the dream. As new album an A.merican D.ream dropped in February via Mexican Summer, the outfit of the retro, spacy landmine was of melodic proportions. Be it half a decade later these boys still have it – the power chord minimalists, the gritty urban blues, the success that is to embark is one that is approaching this fruitful sextet.

The moment that changed everything though, that time-stopping, this-can’t-be-real, is-this-the-afterlife moment came as Tinariwen, the Tuareg musicians from the Sahara Desert region of northern Mali stepped on stage. It’s only been but a dream to see live the men who witnessed genocide as children – the compelling faces that have taken musicality and made it a true release – one of pain, laughter, death and joy through rhythm and by word.

As the sun released itself to the moon Los Angeles’s Warpaint, the alt-rock lineup of Emily Kokal, Theresa Wayman, Jenny Lee Lindberg and Stella Mozgawa, took flight. It’s not often you experience an all girl outfit that is as live and hypnotic as Warpaint. Particularly reminiscent of their moniker, these ladies delve into the chemistry of adornments applied to the face and body, as a mesmerizing tool yet strikes with vengeance as one does mid-battle. With riveting stage presence and sonic aptitude, Warpaint acts as a full body, moving and weaving intricate guitar lines and vocals into all limbs and parts of a functioning whole.

Psych Fest has taken itself to new levels with this pool of talent, and still, we’ve two more days of the best psychotomimetic music funneling through the world to come.

Photos By Kristen Blanton