Seattlest's Picks for Decibel Fest: Day 3

We hope all of you electronauts enjoyed the first night of Decibel Fest (and don't forget, there's plenty of good stuff coming up tonight). Electronica wizard Matthew Romein is back to recommend some of his favorite acts from tomorrow's line-up:

Warm Oscillations at the Crocodile
While the genre name witch-house sets itself up for easy jokes about sampling "Monster Mash," it's an apt moniker for a style which incorporates skeleton rattling kicks and guttural, druid vocal drones. Genre figureheads Salem have waded through truly menacing territory with their codeine overdose, marble-mouthed rap-a-longs. oOoOO rarely approaches that level of dread but his beats start and stop in an effectively off-kilter manner, bringing a tension to the music that lesser artists use gimmicks to achieve. There's also a willingness to bring poppier elements into the mix. Witness the bass line in "Hearts" which is downright funky as opposed to spooky. It doesn't all work, though. The waifish female vocals add variety to the beats but rarely offer the transcendent arc that many of the songs need.

Star Slinger. Courtesy of sickchirpse.com

Star Slinger quickly established an Internet presence on both the strength and volume of his remixes. His so-called refix of How To Dress Well's "Ready for the World" shows a deft touch for oozy bass and skittering drums but his real skill lies in his Dilla-esque vocal cuts, an affinity he shares with fellow drag-and-drop luminary, Young Montana?. His solo stuff retains all the key ingredients but suffers from a limited palette, a problem he didn't have to worry about when working with other people's material. He does pull it off, though, on the tongue-in-cheek "Do It Myself" when a crooning soul sample imperceptibly morphs into climactic grunts and groans pulled from an old school porno.

Mux Mool delivers big textures that shuffle across neon Tron grids. If you and your friends were holed up in an abandoned European castle playing Mega Man 2, you might approach the cavernous depth of his Atari tones. At his best, he pulls off the sense of grandiosity that makes Bass Nectar such a draw on the festival circuit. Less inspired numbers are run-of-the-mill bro-step.

Warm Oscillations at the Crocodile // Show 9:00, 21+ // tix $18 (purchase at Sonic Boom or at the door)

No Sleep Til Brooklyn at Showbox SoDo
Firmly rooted in the same psychedelic, dorm room jams as contemporaries Teengirl Fantasy, Blondes is capable of occupying the same astral plane as space disco savant Lindstrom--an unsurprising notion considering one of their songs is called "Moon Dance." The sparkling, floating snyths and sinus clearing claps are what you immediately notice, but it's the warm, worming bass lines and steady kicks that keep this irresistible brand of moonbase disco in orbit.

When's the last time you listened to Play? You know, the Moby album that sold 10 Million "compact discs" which you probably listened to on the way to school with your dad because it was the only thing you both could agree on besides classic rock. I mean some of you must still have a copy, right? Or did the "Porcelain"-scored Nordstrom commercials ruin it for you? Moby definitely had a more pronounced rise and fall than most of the artists at this festival. While it's easy to poke fun at his unprecedented, new agey brand of commercial success, it's not for no reason that he's actually a well-respected DJ. If you are the kind of person who think spring break should involve Balearic trance and classic rave being spun on the beaches of Ibiza by superstar DJs then this is the show for you.

No Sleep Til Brooklyn at Showbox SODO // Show 9:00pm, 16+ // tix $25

Don't have too much fun tonight- you've got to be up tomorrow to tune in for the last installment of Matthew's Decibel Fest picks.