Inaugural Best Dead City Music Festival doubles as Turboslacker album release

Turboslacker, spooky intergalactic indie surf rock from Dayton, will be releasing its debut album, “Pixelated Lithiums,” on Friday, August 9, as a part of the Best Dead City Music Festival at the Brightside (905 E 3rd St, Dayton).

This is the first year of the Best Dead City Music Festival, a one-day event with performances on two stages. The outside patio area will feature a dance party with DJs German Sanchez, Blastiiid and EtchNSktch.

Acts gracing the mainstage are Back Stabbath (Dayton), Lung (Cincinnati), Abertooth Lincoln (Dayton) and death’s dynamic shroud: an electronic, vaporwave trio from Dayton, now based out of Los Angeles and playing its first-ever hometown show.

Best Dead City will also host a slew of performers from the area and those with deep Dayton roots, like Moira, Bomb Bunny and Gran Gran. DJ Curtastrophe will be deejaying before the show.

Local pop-up vendor booths from Dayton, staples such as Heart Mercantile and Clash Consignment, will supplement this unforgettable night of music and community.

A name like Best Dead City Music Festival could raise some eyebrows, as the “dead city” in question is Dayton. But Nate Wainscott, Turboslacker’s guitarist who named the festival, says it’s more of a compliment.

“It’s not meant to be a bad thing; it’s a badge of honor,” Wainscott said. “All these different titans of industry pulled out of the city. [I know] this person whose job is to go around to different cities that experience things like this. They told me this was the best dead city they’d ever been to. They’re like, ‘This city should be dead and it’s not… it’s quite the opposite. It’s vibrant.’ That’s why we named it Best Dead City. It’s a little bit of a back-handed compliment but it’s a badge of honor.”

Wainscott has lived all over the country but says he’s never felt such a sense of community and a welcome embrace as when he moved to Dayton.

Nathan Peters, Turboslacker’s vocalist and keyboardist, quipped that next year the festival will just be called “Best City.”

Turboslacker started as a recording project between Wainscott and bassist Brian Davis around 2021, eventually adding Peters and drummer Gus Stathes, taking the project out of recording in basements to play stages.

The band draws inspiration from myriad influences, like David Bowie, The Flaming Lips, Joy Division and Nick Cave, but creates a unique flair all its own, fusing orchestral electronica with the pedal-mashing of an experimental rock band. Turboslacker has been featured on WYSO’s Kaleidoscope and consistently draws larger crowds with each enigmatic and electrifying live show.

“Pixelated Lithiums” was self-produced by all four band members, with additional production and mixing by Christopher Fudurich (who’s produced Ozma and Jimmy Eat World) and mastering by award-winning mixer, Bob DeMaa.

The band pulls from all its influences, not to mention the influence each seasoned musician brings from their other projects (like Captain of Industry, Repeater, Passeport and The Sailing), and melds them together into a danceable, headbang-able and inventive debut record.

Turboslacker released its first single, “Sleep Like Hell,” in November 2023. It starts with Peters’ haunting and unaccompanied vocals (“I’ll be your harvest, I’ll be your ghost / Just float me some oxygen, let’s decompose”), and then the band bursts in with a wall of distortion and power — mirroring that of the band’s entrance onto the Dayton music scene.

The band’s second single, the eponymous “Pixelated Lithiums,” was released in April.

“I think we’re all really proud of this album,” Wainscott said. “We couldn’t have done it without Brian [Davis] engineering this thing… it wouldn’t have come out like this [without] everybody in the band, but I think Brian was the engine for making sure we captured this correctly.”

Stathes added that Davis was the brains and the brawn behind it.

“Having recorded in studios before, and [having] that time limit, you’ll always hear something later and say, ‘I would love to go back and fix that,’” Davis said. “But since we were doing it ourselves, we did get to go back and fix that and it came out how we all wanted it to.”

Earlier this year, the band raised more than $5,600 on Kickstarter to get “Pixelated Lithiums” pressed to vinyl.

“All of us who’ve made music our whole life … we just give and give, oftentimes not getting anything in return,” Peters said. “[Kickstarter] is a pretty powerful tool we have that we didn’t have when I was first coming up.”

“Dayton gave this album to us,” Wainscott added.

Or, maybe more specifically, the Best Dead City did.