Loop Artist Marc Rebillet Welcomes ACL to His How-to-Get-the-Fuck-Down Seminar

Marc Rebillet doesn’t twerk, and that’s gotta be an artistic choice, because you’d expect some twerking. A man of classic tastes, he prefers the circular hip thrust while raging over a laptop in underwear.

On Sunday at 5:30pm, the native Dallas-ite ripped into his ACL crowd immediately. “I love you. Shut the fuck up,” he croaked. Onstage audience abuse from a nice guy like MR? The 33-year-old rushed to his keyboard and took his own advice, conjuring a musical improvisation in loafers and a long shiny robe without further ado.

Fifteen minutes in, Loop Daddy had already crowd surfed with a bottle of Champagne. He sprayed his hyped audience while the flutes on his laptop table sat empty.

Don't spill: Marc Rebillet surfs the crowd at ACL Fest with a bottle of bubbly. (Photo by Gary Miller)

“I’d like to welcome everyone here to the Austin Municipal County How-To-Get-The-Fuck-Down Seminar,” he said, screaming that his set was a workout class and disrobing. The audience chanted along spontaneously, bouncing for every drop and clapping in rhythm with no prompting.

Rebillet’s performance character dresses like a yacht playboy and has a mouth like a sex-obsessed lunatic. It’s standard pop star fare, but the musician can’t be bothered to rhyme or counted on to always measure rhythm perfectly with syllables. It’s an ad-lib situation plundering mind meanderings and ruminations on butts. The strange verbal spews are funny because they’re shocking and sometimes they’re just weird. “Be careful with your life,” he rapped, launching a short, on-the-spot song creation with no real context, but some of the earnestness he occasionally brings to the table.

Rebillet’s loops go down easy and play like the best tracks of an old school underground techno DJ’s set. Does he love house? He makes it with gusto. Chicago or Detroit pioneers? He’s a big fan of Flying Lotus, Reggie Watts, and James Blake, whose influences seep into his style. And yet the audience seemed most taken most by Rebillet’s personality. The same set without the manic energy would be a loss.

His playful meanderings included a feint at wondering what the audience was doing in his room where he was trying to enjoy some chai-spiced tea. Rebillet has countless videos of bedroom beats for fans to sift through. Shifting down to loungey keys, he created an uptempo house track and broke out his shaker, looping it. He hit Reggie Watts style high notes that faded like a memory. “I can see your dick through the pants,” he said. He sang about delicious salmon dinners. (Coincidence? Later Tyler the Creator would mention Austin’s Whole Foods salmon.) He created a fat majestic track à la Hudson Mohawke or Odesza. He made a few folk-style South American-influenced tunes with a whistle where the flute might be.

“What do you wanna hear?” Rebillet asked at the end of his hour, and those loud enough about “Girl’s Club” were rewarded with the goofy song from last year’s Loop Daddy III. He’d let the audience cheer for a beat tone earlier. “Get the fuck out of bed” came last and then Rebillet was back off into an elegant imaginary land of tomcat hijinks and swinger shenanigans.