FOREWORD

Change can be a daunting thing. For twelve years we ran a tight ship at our Austin home of Latitude 30, making some great memories and friends with a great many Austinites along the way. But sadly our friend Ahmad’s lease came to an end and it was ambiguous as to what fate would befall our home from home. We put on innumerable fantastic shows there and leaving all that behind is indeed a wrench; Frank Carter breaking out the front window of the venue two songs into his set, the bartenders abandoning the bar in favour of the mosh pit for Enter Shikari, a bona-fi de pop star performance from Estelle, chart toppers The 1975 and Bastille IN THE SAME NIGHT, Frightened Rabbit full stop. Ezra Collective having such a big crowd outside trying to see in that we had to put a speaker in the window, the hair standing up on the back of your neck as SOAK absolutely silenced a noisy room, the queue for Rag’n’Bone Man extending into another zip code, the palpable zeitgeist at the Kate Tempest show and the feeling you were watching something very special indeed when a then relatively unknown Yola took to the stage last year. But at the end of the day a venue is just a building. Bricks and mortar. It’s what you put in it that counts. So after a long and exhausting search we’ve landed at Cedar Street Courtyard, which was for many years one of the key SXSW venues and according to our in house photographer at least, the single best daytime venue in Austin. We are tremendously excited by the acts on this year’s line-up, and it’s their performances that really make BME special. So here’s to a couple of great pictures and hopefully a great many wonderful shows.

BME alumni Her’s sadly passed away in a road accident on tour last year. Much love to their families and team.