Just Announced Communikey Festival announces first batch of 2011 artists

Once the robopocalypse occurs, we’re pretty certain robotic gamelan orchestras will be common enough to be unremarkable. Right now, however, they’re pretty novel—so if you hope to see one before our shiny, robot masters have us all in chains, then you should probably plan to attend this year’s iteration of the Communikey Festival, running April 13-17 in Boulder.

The five-day festival, now in its fourth year, just released a sneak peek at the lineup for 2011, and the aforementioned robot gamelan troupe, Gamelatron, is among the announced acts. Other acts announced thus far include Monolake, Atom TM, Mark McGuire (of Emeralds), Dark Dark Dark, Chancha Via Circuito, El G, William Basinski, Audiopixel, and Spinoza. That lists covers a lot of territory, from audiovisual installation art to tape loop work, to, well, a goddamn robot gamelan orchestra. In other words, fans of beardy, chin-stroking electronics, rejoice!

Early bird passes go on sale tomorrow, Jan. 26, at the festival’s website and elsewhere. Those will set you back $65 each, which is actually pretty cheap for five days of world-class electronic music, plus workshops, film screenings, and the other stuff associated with the festival. We’ll have more artist announcements as they become available.