Jas McDaniel
Jex Thoth
In a city overflowing with festivals, a pair of Madison musicians decided there’s room for one more. Jason Hartman and Jeff Bach (who owns the Madison-based Riff Reaper Records) have launched Ancient Future: Heavy Psych and Doom Fest to expose local audiences to two sprawling, experimentally inclined genres they feel are underrepresented in Madison’s scene.
Hartman has spent two decades building a reputation and forming relationships with bands around the region as a member of the long-running Madison-based heavy psych outfit Vanishing Kids, which he plays in with his wife, vocalist Nikki Drohomyreky. That’s how he attracted established acts like chugging, heavy-riffing Cincinnati-based Electric Citizen for the daylong (seriously, from 3 p.m. to close) festival at the Frequency on April 29, which features nearly a dozen bands from around the Midwest.
Jason Hartman
“I thought it’d be kind of cool to bring these bands from out of town that my band has played with a bunch, from Rockford and Milwaukee and Chicago, and bring them here,” says Hartman. “I figured I could just book them all at one time and make an event of it,” he says. Electric Citizen frontwoman Laura Dolan describes Hartman as “a stand-up guy and an amazing guitar player.” Dolan says she used to run a similar festival in Cincinnati: “I’m familiar with the hard work it takes to do something like this, and I have a lot of respect for it.”
Ancient Future — with a name stolen from a former New Age crystal shop on Willy Street — will feature headlining sets from Electric Citizen and Jex Thoth, a globetrotting Madison-based group that has toured Europe but only played one show here. The lineup also includes Ausculation, Cosmic Relic and House of Lud.