Despite its origins as a showcase of psychedelic music, Levitation has expanded in recent years – especially after co-founders the Black Angels brought back Austin Psych Fest as a separate event in 2023 – to celebrate all types of alternative music. This Halloweekend, Austin welcomes OGs of noise rock (the Jesus Lizard), shoegaze (Slowdive), and metal (Boris), plus modern-ish favorites across post-punk (Dry Cleaning), chillwave (Washed Out), and electroclash (the Dare). To represent both ends of the old-new spectrum, the Chronicle caught up with post-punk giants Gang of Four, who play the Far Out Lounge Nov. 1, and singer-songwriter Nilüfer Yanya, who plays Mohawk Nov. 3. 
In 1979, Gang of Four unleashed Entertainment!, a defining post-punk document whose scratchy guitar, funk rhythms, and leftist lyrics inspired both future musicians (Kurt Cobain listed it among his 50 favorite albums) and filmmakers (Sofia Coppola used “Natural’s Not in It” to open her wonderfully anachronistic 2006 film Marie Antoinette). Forty-five years later, fans still gush to founding members Jon King and Hugo Burnham.
“I went to see Pavement [recently] in New York, and their guitar player, Scott [Kannberg], was just raving about it,” drummer Burnham says. “He said, ‘Oh, it changed us.’”
Entertainment!’s lyrics – about consumerism, war, misogyny, and a general sense that the world was ending – emerged from Cold War paranoia.
“We thought we were going to get fried in a nuclear war,” King recalls. “Every single household in Britain was sent a booklet about how to survive the bomb, which is basically not how to survive the bomb, [but] how to die quick.” On Zoom, he holds the very pamphlet, preserved in a glassine folder, up to the camera. He got the lyrics for a later track, 1981’s “In the Ditch,” from the guide’s instructions.
“We found this all really quite funny in a very black way,” the vocalist shares. Less funny, he admits, is that “all the songs still are relevant” today.
“It’s terrible at the moment,” King says. “I alternate between wanting to hear every single item on the news, and read every item online, about what’s going on in the Middle East, to not wanting to hear it at all.” He quotes Entertainment!’s penultimate song, “5:45”: “How can I sit and eat my tea with all that blood flowing from the television?”
Now in their late 60s, King and Burnham – alongside Slint’s David Pajo, replacing founding guitarist Andy Gill, who died in 2020 – wrap Gang of Four with a 2025 farewell tour, where they’ll play their debut album in full with a second set of other fan favorites. Though “it still feels as dire,” an admittedly “not very friendly” King says interacting with the audience helps.
“There [are] people in their 20s, the age I was when I wrote that stuff, saying, ‘You helped me get through difficult times. You helped me get through college. You’ve helped me think about stuff,’” the singer says. “And I’m genuinely touched.”
This article appears in October 25 • 2024.
